Luce Chatter

Jayhawk Wannabe

2012-01-14T19:27:00.004-06:00

In honor of today's awesome Jayhawk comeback against Iowa State, I wanted to share this fantastic version of the Rock Chalk chant that can be found on "Page 2" of ESPN.com.

How cute is that little guy?

Graphic Geekiness

2012-01-12T23:00:00.000-06:00

Today was a day of deChristmasification (or whatever) at the Luce household, because I finally got the tree and other holiday decorations taken down and put away. Now before you start judging me, let me just say that a) the tradition in my family was to leave the tree up past the New Year because it was so festive and pretty, b) with a live tree it's much easier to wait until the tree totally dries out before taking it down, c) I'm not the only person who takes their tree down this late because the city is still picking trees up tomorrow, and d) I like how our house looks all decorated for Christmas. So there--I like keeping my tree up longer than most people!

Anyway, while I was dedecorating the house I thought it made sense to change the blog up as well so that it was no longer sporting a Christmas theme. I spent a few minutes making a new wintery banner since it's finally feeling like winter here--we actually have a tiny dusting of snow on the ground. I changed up all the colors and the fonts as well, because Blogger now has a billion fonts to choose from, which I love. I could sit there and look through fonts forever. I love fonts!

While I've gotten fairly quick at creating new headers for my blog (partially because I know I can just change them whenever I want to, so I don't fret over the details), my graphic design skills haven't evolved so far that I'm this successful with my other design endeavors. Yesterday I spent the entire morning trying to create a logo for my friends at Crossroads Dog Rescue, since they're having a contest for a new logo on Facebook and have asked for submissions from their supporters. Starting next week they will have their Facebook friends vote for a favorite, so I wanted to submit an entry just for fun! Although my end results are never very professional, I have fun playing around with making graphics and it's definitely good Photoshop practice. Here's what I came up with for them!

Truthfully, I kind of hope mine doesn't get chosen--only because I want them to have tons more logos from way more professional people than me to choose from!

Laughing Babies

2012-01-10T18:46:00.000-06:00

Can I just share that I think one of the funniest sounds in the entire world is a baby laughing? Today my friend Tish posted this video on Facebook of a baby that might be the cutest baby ever born. I mean seriously, if babies were all this cute and stayed this cute then I would definitely have one. I watched about four different videos her parents had posted, and I think this might be my favorite:

There is just nothing better than laughing babies! Watching this one video lead to a 30 minute voyage around YouTube in which I saw at least 10 other laughing babies. For me, laughing babies is like an addiction--once I start watching them I can't stop!

QR Code

2012-01-07T21:29:00.000-06:00

This seriously has to be the nerdiest thing I've ever blogged about, but this afternoon Chad and I went and did some grocery shopping, and for the first time we used the Hy-Vee grocery store smartphone app. It was actually pretty cool, because it allowed us to see what was on sale, add it to our grocery list, and then even find the item in the store. I discovered the app just a few days ago from a QR code (like the one at right) at the check-out register that directed you to the free download. I would totally recommend it if you shop at Hy-Vee and haven't downloaded it already.

As Chad and I were discussing the app and where I found it, we couldn't remember what QR codes were actually called. We looked it up on Wikipedia when we got back home and learned that QR stands for Quick Response code. Our Google search also turned up a website where you could generate your own QR codes, an idea that hadn't ever even crossed my mind. I mean you see those codes everywhere, but I guess I was thinking that it was some sort of costly or complicated process to have one created. In reality, it took about 3 seconds to create one and test it out. I'm totally using one if I ever actually create a photography business and have business cards. You can make your own on this website, and you can scan it with a free app like ScanLife. If you have ScanLife, you should check out my QR code above!

The Year in Pictures 2011

2012-01-03T20:17:00.000-06:00

After a bit of a production delay, I'm excited to finally present the third annual Year in Pictures slideshow! I intended to share this on January 1 as I've done in the past, but a desire to spend time with my hubby on his days off (and my deranged attempt at perfection) kept the project going for a couple of extra days. Last night I was up entirely too late trying to finish it, primarily because I kept going back and tweaking and changing the tiniest little things. I'm a complete nut job sometimes.

There are definitely pictures included that will seem a little random, but let me just tell you my rule for choosing them. Every day that I picked up either my DSLR or my point-and-shoot, I had to include one picture from that day. It might have been from an event I was asked to photograph, a portrait session or a vacation. It might have been something I intended to blog about or a moment I just wanted to preserve. While we all know my standards for "picture worthy" aren't exactly high, at the time that I grabbed my camera, I truly thought there was something that needed capturing! Hopefully most of the time you'll agree, but please be advised that this is 7.5 minutes of your life that you will never get back.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, there were a couple of times this year that a) I didn't take pictures because someone else already was, or b) someone else had their camera more handy, or c) I actually forgot my camera (which I know is hard to believe). In those few cases, I used a picture taken by someone else from that particular day. I think there are three pictures included that didn't come from one of my cameras, so thanks to Beth, Mel and Sarah for sharing their shots!

Please note that I spent several hours picking and adjusting the music for this video, so if there is no sound by the time you get to it, please leave me a comment and let me know. YouTube is in the habit of disabling the audio of any copyrighted material, no matter how insignificant the use!

Cat Cuteness

2011-12-28T16:36:00.000-06:00

I felt the need to share this because a) it gave me a good laugh and b) I have a few blog reading friends that are big cat people. This sweet little kitty is blind, so I feel a little bad laughing at him, but he is just too adorable and cute and funny!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T20:50:00.000-06:00

I'm sure by now there is virtually no one left who is still reading my blog, considering I've done such a terrible job updating it as of late. I had a burst of inspiration and created a new header a couple of weeks ago, but that was as far as I went--I never actually got around to writing anything. My 2012 resolution should definitely be to improve my blogging.

Since I failed to chronicle so much of our year here on the Chatter, I thought I would at least post our Christmas letter--it summarizes the events of 2011 rather nicely. Many of you have probably already received and read this, so please disregard if you're already on the Luce Family mailing list. For the rest of you, please accept our heartfelt wishes for a wonderful holiday season!

(click the above image to enlarge)

December 17, 2011

Dearest Friends and Family,

Once again I have completely procrastinated writing our annual Christmas greetings, so I hope this letter is actually reaching you all before the holiday! Hopefully all of your presents are wrapped and cookies are baked and everyone is now just enjoying wonderful food, time with family, a few days vacation, and the joy of the Christmas miracle

To avoid the normal monotony of our usual December letter, I thought this year I'd instead summarize the events of 2011 with month-by-month highlights. Here's what we were up to in the last 365 days!

January—We enjoyed tons of snow plus a wonderful visit from my brother. My favorite band (Old 97's) came to town and we saw a great show at the Bottleneck. I traveled to Topeka 2-3 days a week to spend time with my mom.

February—Although the outcome wasn't to our liking, we watched our Steelers play in the Super Bowl with a gathering of friends in our basement. For Valentine's Day, Chad took me to yet another 97's show on a fun weekend trip to St. Louis. We had tons more snow, which resulted in a fantastic day of sledding with our nephews Miles and Quinn. We made our first visit to EastLake Community Church, which would later become our new church home.

March—With the help of my brother, we threw a big 65^th birthday party for my mom with about 40 guests. Our Jayhawks made it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA tournament before losing to VCU.

April—Our sweet girl Hope had a benign tumor removed from her chest and another benign growth removed from her mouth. My dad and his wife Mim visited us from Ohio. I started volunteering in the kid's wing at our church.

May—Our little man Celtic was diagnosed with the same aggressive cancer that took his brother, and he passed away about 3½ weeks later at the end of the month. Although we were heartbroken, his passing was made so much easier by our preparedness. I stayed busy with photography, shooting portrait sessions, special events and adoptable dogs from a small local rescue. Chad started volunteering on the setup team at church, and we officially became members.

June—I spent several days hanging out with my college friend Kati when she visited Lawrence for her son's basketball camp. Chad and I celebrated our 17^th wedding anniversary. I did lots of walking with my friend Faith and organized a walking group at church.

July—We visited our friends Jake and Amber in Kearney, Nebraska for the 4^th of July. We helped my mom move from Topeka to Lawrence, and I was thrilled to be able to spend more time with her. My brother visited, as did my friend Emily and her sister. I shot another friend's family portraits and we saw another 97's show at Crossroads in Kansas City.

August—I walked in my sixth 60 mile 3-Day for the Cure, this time in Chicago with my friend Amber. We celebrated Hope's 11^th birthday, and continued to be amazed that her deafness hasn't slowed her down. I started volunteering with my mom on Mondays at the food pantry where I volunteer some Saturdays.

September—Fresco turned five, and about that time we had a visit from my friend Michele, who currently lives in Africa. Chad and I went back to Chicago for a small vacation because I loved the city so much the previous month. I did a couple more volunteer photography gigs.

October—I shot three more portrait sessions and another special event—I think it's about time for me to start charging money! Dad and Mim visited again, and Chad and I started hosting a weekly church study group.

November—I co-hosted my third baby shower of the year, and I shot another family photo session. Chad celebrated 8 years at Westar Energy, and we celebrated with our friend Ted for his 40^th birthday. I took a Western Caribbean cruise with 7 girlfriends to celebrate my friend Leigh Ann's 30^th birthday, while Chad took a golf trip to Florida with his friend Dante and got his first eagle!

December—Chad finished his second year on the Lawrence Sustainability Advisory Board and also completed the first year of his term on the Chamber of Commerce Board. He played what seemed like his 40th round of golf for the year today—December 17!

We hope that your 2011 was full of joy and full of blessings as well. May your holiday season be filled with reminders of the true meaning of Christmas!

Much love to all,

Kim (and Chad)

Cuteness

2011-10-28T16:17:00.001-05:00

Once again, my grand intentions of blogging about various things in our life have been foiled by our life. The thing that's been keeping me busy the last couple of weeks--besides laundry, cooking, cleaning and volunteering--is editing pictures of a couple of the cutest babies ever!

A couple of weeks ago I did a photo session with my friend Leigh Ann's 6-month-old munchkin--the beautiful E. Claire, also known as Emerson. Leigh Ann is well-known among her friends for making fabulous gourmet cupcakes, so when she saw a cupcake costume for Emerson, it was a no-brainer. She then got the awesome idea to make cupcakes to match Emmie's outfit and use those in a photo session, so that's what we did! We attempted to make a studio with said cupcakes on their back patio, and while the light wasn't very good at the time of day we had to shoot, there were still a few good pictures. These are just a few of my favorites.

About the time I was almost finished editing all of Emmie's pictures last weekend, we had the pleasure of going to KC to hang with our friends Vikkie and Brett, at which time I got a few shots of their lovely family and sweet boys. It was great to spend time with them, and Vikkie fixed us a fantastic dinner, part of which I've already tried to replicate at home. I think the pictures turned out okay, and I'm in LOVE with little Abram's cheeks! He is the most expressive little guy, which I believe I mentioned back in May when I did my first session with them! Could these kids be any cuter?

Oh, and the rest of the family is pretty adorable too. :)

Speaking of adorable, I couldn't resist sharing this video I saw this morning on Petfinder. Holy cow. Cuteness overload.

Go Muppets

2011-10-12T22:45:00.000-05:00

Tonight while we were watching Modern Family (which I thought was an especially funny episode, by the way), we saw a commercial for the new Muppet movie that is apparently out or coming out soon. That reminded me of this video, which I saved to a blog post back in August because I thought it was funny enough to share, and then apparently promptly forgot.

I was a huge fan of the Muppets as a child and wanted to be Janice every time I'd "play Muppets" with my brother or friends. Now I think I'd rather be Animal, because I love the way he drums. Either way, today was the perfect day to watch this again because it was a doozie of day with a massive amount of stress, drama and tears. The cure? The Muppets and OK Go!!

Senior Session

2011-10-09T23:23:00.000-05:00

Over the summer I spent several Saturdays walking with women from our church in the "Weekend Walking Women" growth group that I organized. One day as we were walking through Prairie Park in Lawrence, one of the women in my group mentioned that she thought it would be a nice spot to take her daughter's senior pictures. I inquired about the session they were planning, thinking that maybe we could talk cameras if she was a photography hobbyist like myself. I was horrified when she then said she was just planning on taking her daughter's senior pictures with her point-and-shoot camera. I immediately offered my free photography services, because the thought of a senior girl having less than desirable pictures to hand out to her friends (do seniors even do that in this digital age?) broke my heart!

We ended up not taking the pics over the summer because it was so ridiculously hot, but last weekend the weather was absolutely perfect and the leaves were just starting to change, so we headed to Rim Rock Farm just north of Lawrence. Rim Rock is the cross country course of KU, and since this senior is a cross country runner, she has run several meets there. Her coach called another coach, and pretty soon we had permission to shoot at this beautiful location. I had driven by there on a couple of occasions but hadn't ever actually been on the course, but it was absolutely gorgeous--just the perfect location for a photo shoot!

I had a great time with my friend and her daughter as we walked almost the entire course looking for beautiful picture backdrops and taking advantage of about every one we found. My subject was beautiful and sweet and a great sport, even when I know she was getting tired of smiling! She was also a great sport about just changing clothes in the woods and tolerating the two local dogs who joined us along the way. It was kind of a pain because they kept trying to get into pictures, but it was also kind of fun to have them as escorts all over the course!

I was pretty pleased with the pictures we got out of the session, because the light and the setting were just so great and my senior subject was just beautiful. Of course, as usual, I took entirely too many pictures and had very few bad ones to delete, so I ended up sending them a link to 130 or so pics to choose from, which they didn't seem very happy about! In fact, they didn't seem overly thrilled with the pictures at all, which was kind of disappointing. Well, I shouldn't say kind of--it was really disappointing! I wanted them to be thrilled with the results--someday I want my pictures to be worth charging money for!

Regardless, I thought my first senior subject was gorgeous and worth sharing. Here are just a few of my favorites, although there were many others that I absolutely loved. If you are on Facebook, you can see a few other of my favorites here! If you have a whole lot of time on your hands and a lot of patience, you might also be able to see the full set of pics here!

Our Church

2011-10-01T11:01:00.002-05:00

Clearly I've been an absentee blogger again, probably much to the dismay of my dad but not many other people. I will admit life has been a little overwhelming for me lately, and when I have free time I often just get lost in another world by reading. Now that I'm all caught up on the silly but fun Janet Evanovich series, I guess it's time to get caught up on my blog.

There's been so much going on in our lives I don't really know where I would even begin if I was actually going to try and get caught up. One of the things that's been keeping me pretty busy is our church. I mentioned back in April that we'd started going to Eastlake Community Church, and soon after that we got really involved really quickly! We became members in May, just after I joined the kids team, where I teach in the K-2 classroom. Chad joined the set-up team, which means that he arrives at the school that is currently our church house at 6:30 several Sundays a month. I also recently joined the prayer team, so I have the privilege of praying for the needs of our attenders throughout the week. I lead an activity growth group over the summer, and we're currently recruiting people to join another growth group we're leading as a couple starting in just a couple of weeks.

It probably goes without saying after I just described all of our involvement, but I absolutely love our new church. The music is just fantastic every week, the pastor is super funny and engaging, the message is life-applicable and full of scripture, the people are loving and unpretentious, the church body is incredibly diverse, and the environment is casual and relaxing. Not that I was ever opposed to "normal" church, but I've come to really love a place that is very "unchurchy." I love that anyone off the street who has never stepped foot into a church in their life could come in and feel comfortable and loved. Everything about our church is designed to make newcomers feel welcome, regardless of where they are in their spiritual journey.

You can watch all sorts of videos from and about Eastlake on their Vimeo page, but there was one video that I just really thought explained the who/what/why/when of Eastlake really well.

I could probably go on and on, but let me just say that it's really nice to be excited about going to church each week. As one Eastlaker recently said, it's a church you're excited to go to and disappointed to miss!

Tin Wedding Anniversary

2011-09-07T20:44:00.000-05:00

Today I just wanted to give a big shout out to our good friends Jake and Amber, who are celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary today! Way to go, friends! Ten years is a huge accomplishment!

This morning when I went to JibJab to pick out a card for them, I didn't have any saved faces of Jamber (their celebrity name) in my account, which makes me think I hadn't ever cast them in a JibJab video! I was sure they'd agree that this was a horrible travesty, so I proceeded to pick out some good pictures of them to edit and stick into a card. I ended up choosing the same card I've used for our anniversary and that of several other friends in the last few years, but it's just too classic to resist. Plus, it's just so them--this is totally something I can see Jamber doing (wink, wink).

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

As you can see from the video, Jake and Amber are a perfect couple and wonderful dance partners. Seriously though, they are happier than 95% of the couples we know and they make marriage look easy. I'm so glad they have been blessed with each other and that we've been blessed with their friendship!

Five

2011-09-01T23:20:00.000-05:00

Tonight we have a lucky pup sleeping right in between us, even though he's normally only allowed at the foot of the bed. It's a special occasion though, because today is our boy Fresco's birthday! He didn't get much of a party today, so tonight he's getting some special snuggle treatment. He did also get a special photo session earlier this evening, as you can see from the handsome photo. Since it was over 100 degrees today, he was hot and panting when he came inside--which meant that I got some lovely smiles.

Although Fresco also got a special doggie sandwich cookie made with homemade biscuits and peanut butter this evening, he was a little bummed that he didn't get a walk today. Since we walked over 3.5 miles last night, I didn't worry too much about walking this morning, especially since I was busy driving a friend to the airport. I think he felt a little slighted! Our big guy loves his daily walks, and 3.5 miles is definitely not enough to wear him out. Even though he's now five years old, he's not showing any signs of slowing down!

With that said, although he still has tons of energy for walks, our sweet man has matured in so man other ways in the 4 years since we started fostering him, and even in the 3+ years since we adopted him. He is much more calm when people come over--his manners with guests have improved greatly. He is still excitable about people and dogs walking by our house, but even that has improved a great deal! He still has his quirks and tiny issues, but overall he's just a big lanky lump of doggy love. We just couldn't adore this snuggly pup much more.

Of course, since I shared a picture of Fresco on Hope's birthday then I have to do the same for our sweet girl today. Although I have to say she wasn't quite as into the photo session as the birthday boy. :)

Sissy

2011-08-22T23:31:00.000-05:00

Just a couple of hours ago we had a special birthday celebration for our sweet, adorable and weird girl Hope, who's also often known as "Sissy" in the Luce household. I guess I'm using the term "celebration" rather loosely, considering we really only walked into the bedroom (where she'd pulled all the covers back on our bed) and fed her a special gigantic biscuit I made her earlier this evening. We sang her happy birthday as well, but since she can hear virtually nothing these days, she just looked sheepish and confused as to what was going on. Hopefully she knows it's her special day though, since she got a new pink glow-in-the-dark leash this morning along with the batch of pumpkin biscuits. As you can see below, she enjoyed her huge biscuit and her brother enjoyed his too.

I don't think I've ever mentioned here that we often call her Sissy, but I think Chad actually started calling her that in the first year we had her. Although I hated the nickname initially (I have no idea why), somehow after Steeler died I warmed up to it. I guess because once she and Celtic only had each other, it just seemed completely appropriate. We used the nickname only occasionally at first, but as the years have gone on I think we now call her Sissy more than we call her Hope, which doesn't really bother her since she can't hear us anyway!

Speaking of years gone by, today isn't truly her birthday, but it's the day we celebrate because it's the anniversary of the day we brought her home and started fostering her. I just can't believe it was only 6 years ago today! I think I probably said this on her birthday last year, but I feel like she's always been a part of our family. I can obviously look back at pictures of the boys and see that we once had no Hope, but it just seems like so many lifetimes ago.

Since we don't really know Hope's true birthday, we also don't really know how old she actually is, but today we're celebrating her 11th trip around the sun. She could be as old as 13, which you would never know except for her grey muzzle, cloudy eyes, terrible teeth and hearing loss. Seriously though, her agility and enthusiasm are still that of a puppy! She goes from dead asleep to 100 miles an hour in about 2 seconds, and she barrels all over the house and yard like a maniac when she's not snoozing. She loves her naps, but she also loves making a dramatic entrance to let you know she's inside!

How sweet is that happy face? We just love our little Sissy so much and are so thankful that's she's celebrating yet another birthday with us!

Month Gone By

2011-08-14T23:40:00.000-05:00

I knew it had been a long time since I'd blogged, but I didn't realize how long it had actually been until last week when I was setting up my mom's Internet access and wireless network. I used her shortcut to my blog as a test to see if the connection was working, and I about fell out of my chair when I saw the date of my last post was exactly a month before!

There's so much been going on this summer--especially in the last 2 months--that has been keeping me busy. So many of these things I intended to blog about and still might dedicate entire posts to, but for now, here are the things that have been keeping me away from the computer!

1. The 3-Day--As most of my friends know, last weekend I walked 60 miles in the 3-Day in Chicago. The last several months have been filled with lots of soliciting money, writing thank yous, and walking--lots and lots of walking! Pictures from the event can be found here!

2. Moving--We obviously didn't move, but in the middle of July we helped my mom move to Lawrence! We are so thankful to have her here, but I've been very busy helping her get settled. There's always just so much to buy and to do when you move--for example, getting her Internet connection hooked up!

3. Houseguests--This summer we've had lots of people visit, which has been wonderful. My friend Kati and her son were here for several days in June, my brother was here for several days around my mom's move, my friend Emily and her sister stayed a couple of nights in July, our friend Jason stayed a couple of nights with us a few weeks ago, and our nephews stayed with us this weekend. I'm so thankful for our guest room and thankful that we've put it to use!

4. Traveling--We haven't done much traveling this summer, but we did spend a terrific 4th of July weekend in the very nice town of Kearney, Nebraska, visiting our friends Jake and Amber. Even if I don't blog about it, I hope to at least share the pictures at some point!

5. Car Shopping--During the month of June we spent many evenings scouring the Internet researching and shopping for cars. We ended up getting a new Hyundai Elantra at the beginning of July and we've already put over 3,000 miles on it!

6. Growth Groups/Journey Group--Our regular "Journey" Group that started at our old church many years ago continued to meet and study all summer, and then Chad and I also attended an 8 week Growth Group study through our new church. I also led an activity growth group of walking women on Saturday mornings, and it took quite a bit of time to plan out the routes each week!

7. Reading--I reread the first book in the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum series while I was in Chicago, which I'd started years and years ago and only got about 4 books into. I recently finished collecting the whole series from Half Price Books, and now that they're all in my possession I can't put them down. My OCD really shows when I start reading, because I lose all self-control and become completely unproductive. It's why I don't read more often!

So there are all of the excuses for my absence that I can think of. Hopefully in the near future I'll get back into the habit of blogging regularly--I've missed this creative outlet!

A Sneak Peek for Andrea

2011-07-10T23:20:00.001-05:00

Last Wednesday evening I finally got the chance to do another practice photo session with my friend Andrea and her family. Even though I think the temperature was only in the 80s, it was so miserably humid outside I felt terrible for Andrea and her hubby and kids! We wandered all over the cute little Baker campus in Baldwin trying to find spots with good light and tolerable shade, and by the end of the evening I'm pretty sure we were all drenched in sweat. It was fun for me and I loved having the opportunity to practice, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't very fun for anyone else!

When I got home that night I immediately started culling and editing pictures with the intention of putting a few on the blog right away for Andrea and her family to see. But of course it got too late that night, and then the next several nights were busy, so here I am four nights later finally getting a few shots up for them to see! I'm still not entirely happy with my editing job on most of these, so hopefully I'll have time during the next week to get these re-edited and get some other good ones picked out of the bunch. Until then, here are a few quick uploads for Andrea and Randy and the adorable Olivia and Dylan!

Happy Funkin' Birthday

2011-07-09T23:29:00.000-05:00

Today is my big brother's birthday, and even though I got the chance to wish him happy birthday on the phone, I of course had to send him an e-card as well. Of course I made him a JibJab card and of course I think it's ridiculously funny. Thankfully, he thought it was pretty funny too and didn't even yell at me when I posted it on his Facebook page.

In all seriousness, my brother is nearly as awesome in real life as he is in this video.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Happy Birthday, Brother! Can't wait to see you next weekend!

Super Beagle

2011-07-01T12:42:00.001-05:00

Oh. My. Goodness. I'm in love with this little girl. For Real.

Could she be any cuter and smarter? I just watched like 10 of her super beagle videos and subscribed to her Youtube channel. Beagles are awesome.

A Birthday Tribute

2011-06-27T23:22:00.001-05:00

Last night I finally looked at some pictures I'd downloaded from my point-and-shoot that were taken a couple of weeks ago when my friend Kati was visiting. Since I so rarely use that camera, the beginning of the bunch actually included a few videos from the last weeks of Celtic's life. Since yesterday would have been his 14th birthday, I started to put together a little video montage in his honor, but of course I didn't have time to finish it until this evening. We miss the little munchkin so much, sometimes it's hard to even look at his sweet face without being sad. Then again, it also warms my heart to see that he was still so happy in the last weeks of his life--the second couple of clips were actually taken just 4 days before he died.

As much as we love and adore our dear Hope and adorable Fresco, our love for them will never quite be the same as our love for Celtic and Steeler. The first furry babies to steal our hearts were our sweet Beagle-ish boys.

Bad Mother Father

2011-06-19T23:09:00.000-05:00

First of all, I have to just say that I feel like a bad wife, because this morning I forgot to give my doggy daddy the Father's Day cards I bought him from the dogs and from myself! I don't think I even remembered it was Father's Day until I got to church and started seeing all the people with crazy mustaches for the Father's Day mustache contest. Yes, our church is a little goofy, but we love it!

Although I didn't remember Father's Day this morning, thankfully I remembered it earlier in the week and sent my dad a paper card and also an email card. I know he already opened it earlier today, but I just have to share it here as well because I think it's hilarious.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

There's just something so funny about seeing my Pops beating up on people! Happy Father's Day to my dad and all the other fathers out there!!

Amazing Cancer Treatment

2011-06-16T13:15:00.000-05:00

Wow. This morning I started watching a documentary online that a friend of my mom's sent me a link to, and although I'm only half way through it, I'm already just blown away. It's about a doctor in Texas who is successfully treating many patients with very aggressive cancers that haven't responded to conventional chemotherapy and radiation. His name is Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, and he's a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist who has been attacked over and over by the FDA because his treatments do not involve conventional drugs made by pharmaceutical companies. His gene-targeted cancer medicines called Antineoplastons, which he discovered in the 1970s and produces in his own labs, are about 5 times as successful as chemo drugs in clinical trials, and they don't have any adverse side effects. It's crazy and scary that the information about them hasn't been more widely disseminated since the research has been around for decades!

The cool thing is, I'm watching the movie for free today on the Burzynski Movie website, and you can too for just a few more days--right here on my blog!

Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business from BurzynskiMovie on Vimeo.

If you don't have the time to watch the whole movie, at least watch the clips and trailers and read articles about the film. Especially for those of us who have had so much cancer in our families, this story is absolutely amazing.

Crossroads Dog Rescue

2011-06-12T16:55:00.000-05:00

Since I'm on the subject of dog pictures, I wanted to share a few pictures I've had the pleasure of taking in the last couple of weeks. I mentioned back when I quit my job in November that I was looking forward to volunteering for a new local dog rescue I'd gotten connected with the year before. When they were just starting out they didn't have much that I could help with, but now that Crossroads Dog Rescue is a growing organization, they have lots of foster dogs who need good pictures for the Internets! I'm super excited to be able to help them in that way!

So a couple of times in the last two weeks I've gone to meet the founder/president to do pictures of their adoptable dogs. It's been so much fun to meet the pups and so exciting to feel like I'm contributing to the world of dog rescue again! They specialize in neonatal rescue, mostly taking in pregnant or new mothers with full litters, since newborn puppies have such a hard time staying healthy in shelter environments. The pups are raised in a healthy and safe home with lots of human interaction, and they generally get adopted as soon as they are old enough to leave their mom, who eventually gets adopted as well. In the less that two years that Crossroads has been an official rescue organization, they've saved and adopted out almost 100 dogs already!

As Crossroads continues to grow and add foster homes to their network, they'll have more and more rescue puppies and dogs to choose from, so check out their blog or Facebook page to keep up with all their adoptable furry friends. You can also contact them at crossroadsdogs (at) gmail.com if you're interested in becoming one of their licensed foster families. Oh, and check out my recent pictures of their adoptable dogs! Most of those pictured have already been adopted, so hopefully they'll have more pups for me to photograph soon!

A Dog's Life

2011-06-09T17:52:00.003-05:00

Last Wednesday I spent much of the day in Topeka completing the arrangements for our boys' final resting place. I say boys' and not boy's because Steeler's remains were actually involved as well as Celtic's. When Steeler died so suddenly five years ago, we had no idea where to have him cremated, so we took him to the Lawrence Humane Society where I volunteered. They were kind enough to do the cremation free of charge, but since their equipment wasn't exactly state of the art, let's just say the remains weren't processed very well. We didn't worry too much about it though, since it was always our intention to lay Steeler to rest with his brother when this time came.

So anyway, I took the little can containing Steeler's remains over to Topeka to the wonderful folks at Heavenly Pet Memorials. I'd discovered them on the Internet a week or so before Celtic passed, and I just can't say enough about how great they were. They were kind enough to take care of Celtic's body on a holiday weekend and also to process Steeler's remains with Celtic's for no extra charge. Now we have their finely processed ashes all put together in a beautiful and safely sealed velvet bag. Heavenly Pet Memorials had a big selection of urns and boxes, and they helped me pick out a beautiful box in which we'll eventually put their remains. Not only that, but they practically counseled me as well. Jody was the consultant there last Wednesday, and she sat there patiently as I talked about our dogs, cried a little, and even showed her pictures. I was there probably a good half hour, and she couldn't have been more caring and consoling.

When I got home from that trip to Topeka, I immediately started the search for the perfect picture to have engraved/etched onto the box. In my mind, I knew the one I wanted to use and remembered the frame it used to be in, but I couldn't for the life of me find the frame or the original in our old boxes of prints. I probably searched through pictures for at least 8 hours total before I finally found the negative on a roll that had no other pictures of the dogs at all. In the process of searching though, I found so many other pictures of the boys that I really loved, so now I'm not even sure if the sought after picture is even the one I want to use! Here are the ones that I'm most strongly considering--I would love your input in the comments!

From their puppyhood

At age 1

At about 3 years old

At about age 5

At age 9, just before Steeler died

For me, searching through all of those pictures was very therapeutic. As I looked back on the very full and active life that Celtic had, it was more difficult to be sad about his passing. As I was reminded of how close he and his brother were, it made me that much happier to think of them reunited in heaven.

During the great picture search I was also inspired to scan and then edit all of my favorite pictures--since I was a pretty horrible photographer in those pre-digital days! Someday I'll hopefully have time to put it to music in a better format, but for now, I hope you enjoy the slideshow of their lives!

OCD Dog

2011-06-07T22:06:00.000-05:00

My aunt just sent this to me and it's seriously one of the funniest things I've seen in quite a while. Of course, since it has over 2 million hits, I'm guessing you may have already seen it. Just in case you haven't though, this one's a keeper.

This guy is adorable, but apparently not quite as smart as most Border Collies. Maybe he's just obsessive-compulsive?

Seventeen

2011-06-05T22:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday my wonderful husband and I celebrated our anniversary, and although I don't normally like to toot my own horn, I have to say I'm kind of proud of us. Although 16 years didn't seem like that big of a deal last year, 17 seems pretty impressive. Maybe it's because 17 seems like it's on the upside of 20 instead of the downside of 15? Maybe it's because people often gasped when I told them what anniversary we were celebrating? I'm not sure exactly why, but when I say we've been married 17 years that sounds like a really long time. Not in a bad way at all--just in the sense that not many of our peers have been married more than ten.

Really though, I shouldn't be prideful about our lengthy marriage at all, because it's really not through our own merit and hard work that we've made it through 17 years. Honestly, being married to Chad couldn't possibly be considered work. God has just blessed me with a loving, affectionate, caring, helpful, loyal and incredibly supportive husband, and He's blessed us with a fairly low-maintenance relationship. We still have so much fun together and share so many interests; we just don't have to try very hard to get along. We love spending time together more than most couples we know--maybe because we are still such good friends.

I often hear people say that marriage is hard work, but by the grace of God, ours hasn't been. Although life in general is often messy and challenging, marriage for us has been relatively easy. We could not be more thankful for the incredible gift of a happy marriage that we've been given.

Our Little Man

2011-06-02T18:40:00.002-05:00

As most of our friends and family know, our little man Celtic passed away early Sunday morning. Although we are very thankful for the almost four weeks we had with him after his diagnosis early last month, we are still incredibly heartbroken. I thought it would be easier knowing ahead of time that we were going to lose him, but I guess no matter how much time we have with our pets, it never seems to be quite enough.

Maybe this loss was more difficult than I thought it would be because of all of Celtic's ups and downs during the last month. On the day that we canceled his surgery, we thought for sure he'd be gone within a couple of weeks. He was so weak and lethargic, and his tumor was still growing rapidly. A couple of days later we started him on a new anti-inflammatory called Piroxicam that was supposed to help with his joint pain. When Dr. Layton suggested it, she mentioned in passing that it also had some "cancer fighting properties." Since she didn't make a big deal of it we didn't think much of it either, but after just a couple of doses, it was obvious that Celtic's tumor had quit growing and was actually getting smaller. In less than two weeks, the tumor's decrease in size was almost as dramatic as the increase had been in the previous two weeks.

We were so thankful for the Piroxicam, since it clearly improved Celtic's mobility and his overall quality of life in his last month. He took a short walk almost every day, had a good appetite and generally seemed pretty much his happy little self. In fact, on the Friday before last, when I was upstairs taking some pictures of 3-Day equipment to send to my friend and 3-Day teammate Amber, the little stinker came right up the stairs behind me, which he was not supposed to do. The entire time I was trying to take pictures he was either trying to steal the socks and pillow or get inside the duffel bag. He was so cute and just as ornery as ever.

It's just so hard to believe that this was just 8 days before he died. I actually started to write an update about him after I took these pics, and now I'm really glad I never got around to finishing it. I probably would have blamed myself for jinxing things when he took a turn for the worse just a couple of days later. It was so strange, because on the Monday after I took these shots, I was at our regular vet with Fresco, and he was somewhat surprised to hear that Celtic was doing so well. Dr. Coles thought maybe we should give Dr. Layton a call to reconsider the surgery since the Piroxicam might have given us a window of opportunity. I called Dr. Layton's assistant later that day and left her a message about how well he was doing and how we wanted to talk to Dr. Layton and get her thoughts on rescheduling. It was almost like Celtic heard the conversation and decided to nix the idea, because within a couple hours his mood and health had totally changed. Out of nowhere, he was completely lethargic and could barely even get up. The next morning, he could only walk about 3 houses down the block and could barely make it back home--the previous day he had walked almost a half mile with no problems!

Although he was a little bit better the day after that, his health and mood were up and down all week. By Saturday he really seemed to have improved--so much so that Chad had actually decided to go to Salina to hunt turkeys on Sunday. Celtic had such a great day on Saturday. He walked farther than he had in several days (and wanted to keep going) and ate a hearty dinner. After dinner he was super spunky and followed Chad all over the house trying to get a bite of bagel. Then about 8 p.m. that night something changed--he became very weak and despondent. We initially thought he would feel better after a good night's sleep. It took us several hours to figure out that this was no ordinary lethargy, at which point we assumed his tumor had finally caused internal bleeding. We hoped he would just fall asleep and pass peacefully, but he barely rested all night long and was clearly very uncomfortable. We finally went to the emergency vet in Topeka at about 4:30 on Sunday morning, and the vet confirmed that there was nothing we could except put him to sleep. By this time, it was obvious that Celtic was in terrible pain. Dr. Carder, who was the vet who attended to Steeler when he died at Stone House back in 2006, thought that Celtic was suffering from the same condition that killed his brother--peritonitis. Dr. Carder guessed that his tumor had actually spread far beyond his armpit and had actually ruptured his gastrointestional tract somewhere. As difficult as it was to let him go, once we realized how much he was hurting, we wished we'd made the decision to go to Topeka hours earlier.

I know hindsight is always 20/20, but I could just kick myself that I didn't recognize Celtic's lethargy on Saturday night for what it was--pain. While he was groaning a little and breathing strangely, he wasn't panting at all, which is usually the tell-tale sign that a dog is hurting. While we knew he was uncomfortable, we thought maybe the internal bleeding was just causing him to be extremely weak and tired. It just didn't seem possible that he could go from being so spunky in the early evening to near death in such a short time, and it never occurred to us that his cancer could have spread so far so quickly. We were anticipating that when it spread, it would spread to the area of his heart/lungs first--not that it would attack farther down in his poor little body. It just breaks my heart that he had such a painful last few hours of his life and we weren't able to help him sooner.

Although Celtic's great day on Saturday fooled us somewhat, we're also very thankful that his last day on earth was a good one. We imagined that his decline would be more gradual and painful, but as it turned out, he got to enjoy life right down to the last day--just like his brother Steeler. We are comforted knowing that they are now running and playing together in heaven.

In Memory of Celtic Bird Luce
June 26, 1997-May 29, 2011

Anniversary Acknowledgement

2011-05-25T21:51:00.000-05:00

Today I have to give a shout out to our good friends Heather and Grant, even though I know they rarely read my blog. I like to tell myself it's because they can only get a slow connection to the Internets out in the country where they live, but in reality I need to just admit to myself that some people just aren't blog readers! Sadly, I'm not much of a blog reader these days either. Since I no longer have a regular routine at my computer, going to Google Reader only crosses my mind about once a week.

Regardless of whether they see this post or not though, I have to say how proud and honored I am to have them as friends since they are celebrating their 20th anniversary today! How awesome is that? We have no other close friends who've been married for 20 years--in fact, they're our only friends who've been married longer than we have! I think it's pretty darn impressive--not to mention highly unusual these days!

Our dear friends were kind enough to invite us to celebrate with them this weekend with a stay in nearby Weston, but unfortunately we didn't feel like we could get a dogsitter for the night due to Celtic's health. I'm bummed we won't be there to commemorate this milestone, but I'm sure they'll still have a wonderful time without us! Congratulations, Grant and Heather!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Mike and Tiffany

2011-05-22T23:50:00.000-05:00

Today I finally finished editing and uploading the engagement pictures I did two weeks ago for our good friends Mike and Tiffany. Mike and Chad met way back in 1990 when they played football together at Hutchinson Community College. They became good friends and eventually roommates, and a few years later Mike was one of the groomsmen in our wedding. Although we only met Tiff in the fall of 2009 when they started dating, I feel like we've known each other longer because we get along so well! She's super smart, amazingly talented and hilariously funny, and we're looking forward to their wedding in Florida next April!

I was way honored that Tiff and Mike asked me to do their engagement photos (along with a few family pictures with them and Mike's son Maddox), but I was a little nervous because I had only done kid/family/baby sessions before theirs. While I'm getting better at spotting good lighting for shots, I'm still terrible at directing people into poses that look normal and natural. Thankfully, Mike and Tiff had lots of ideas about what they wanted to do and poses they liked. Some worked and some didn't, but that's the beauty of digital photography--you can just delete the ones that look dorky!

Once again, during my initial round of editing, I had a terrible time deleting any. I ended up taking my favorite version of every pose--and there were a ton of different poses! Even when I knew that a picture wasn't one of my favorites, I still kept it because I was afraid it might be one of their favorites! I was glad I did, because Tiffany and Mike definitely chose lots of favorites that I wouldn't have considered! It's just interesting how different people have completely different tastes in poses and processing.

Speaking of processing, in this batch of pictures I ended up using a lot more "actions" in Photoshop than I normally do, only because that's what Tiffany really liked. She loved the black and whites and Pioneer Woman's "Old West" technique especially, so I did a lot of different versions of each of their favorite pics. In the end, this is the one that they choose as their official engagement photo!

While I think this is a great picture, I also think it's funny that it's totally not the one that I would have chosen as my favorite. For some reason I absolutely love the more candid shots--the ones where Mike and Tiff are less posed and more engaged (get it...engaged?) with each other are the ones I love. My point is, I think I'm forever going to be editing every picture in the bunch because I'm always going to remember this session when the "clients" chose completely different favorites than I did!

Regardless, I think there were a lot of good ones in the set. If you have a few minutes, take a look at them and let me know what you think!

Birthday #1

2011-05-17T00:42:00.000-05:00

On Saturday Chad and I had the pleasure of attending our little friend Eli's first birthday party. His parents (our good friends Pat and Kristin) threw a wonderful monkey-themed shindig for the little guy complete with an incredible monkey cake and all sorts of other fantastic food. I got to be the official photographer of the event, and I'm glad I could help out in that way since Kristin had her hands full with entertaining guests and Pat was busy manning the grill. Although I haven't gone through and edited all the pictures from the day, here are enough to tell the story of his party!

There were some terrific decorations.

Kristin and her mom made an incredible (and tasty) monkey cake.

Eli was very excited to see his friend Lakin and hugged on her almost the entire day.

He wasn't terribly into opening presents, but he did enjoy playing with the new toys once they were open. I got him this baby blackberry and he immediately knew what to do with it!

Eli had a split second of uncertainty when first given his mini-monkey cake.

The uncertainty soon gave way to this...

...and to this...

...and this! It was a very impressive display of cake eating/playing!

Today was Eli's actual birthday, and this evening I enjoyed more time with the little munchkin and his family when I did his official one-year-old photo session. I came home and started editing right away, and after just a single pass through the bunch I found quite a few that I really like. I hope his parents like them too! I uploaded them quickly in low-quality just so I could provide a sneak peak today!

A Plethora of Pictures

2011-05-14T23:00:00.001-05:00

The last few weeks I've had several photography gigs, although I'm not sure if I'm really allowed to call them gigs yet if I'm not charging any money. Maybe someday I'll set up an actual business and website, but for now I'm content to just practice. It's fun for me, and I love to (hopefully) provide pictures for my friends that will adequately capture a special occasion or moment in time.

The disadvantage to taking so many pictures lately is that I'm having a hard time keeping up with all the editing and sharing of them! I take so many darn pictures at each session or event, it then takes me hours to go through and delete, crop, sharpen and color correct them. My biggest problem is that I have no ability to discern which are bad and which are good. It's like 99% of the time I can find something I like about almost every picture I take, and then I can't delete any of them! I have to go through the batches four or five times to figure out which ones aren't worth keeping, and even then I keep thinking that the ones I end up deleting might be ones that someone else would really like! I just really need to work on my discerning eye!

I'm so slow at this whole editing process that I just tonight finished the pictures I took of our friend Vikkie and Brett and their kids two weeks ago. There were just so many in the batch I liked, I could only narrow it down to 192 pictures! I know that's so ridiculous, and I know not all of them are worth printing, but I just couldn't help myself. Especially because of baby Abe, there were just too many absolutely precious shots. There were probably 100 different adorable expressions by him alone!

Here are just a few of my favorites. If you have a few minutes and have an interest, feel free to look through all 192 of them here!

Happy Boy

2011-05-11T23:03:00.001-05:00

I really intended to blog about some other stuff going on in our life, but clearly I've turned the blog into Celtic Watch 2011. I just can't help it because my life and thoughts are so consumed with him. Last night was a fitful night for both of us, as I sat up ever time I heard or didn't hear him just to make sure he was still breathing and to give him a few pats. Although I went to KC yesterday to pick up a stronger anti-inflammatory medication for him, he still seems to be in so much pain and discomfort. He pants sporadically and is frequently so feverish you can feel the heat radiating off of him. I know his time with us is not long, but with that said, he's still such a sweet and happy little guy. Yesterday morning while we were enjoying the cool morning on the back deck, he got so excited and animated when he was ready to go inside. Since one of my regrets when Steeler died was that I had very few videos of him, I made sure I grabbed my phone and captured the joyful moment.

Speaking of his brother Steeler, I've told this to several friends in the last week, but I can't even tell you how much comfort it brings me to know that Steeler and so many other doggy friends (Pepper, Homer, Leo and others) will be waiting for our sweet boy when he gets to doggy heaven. Although I know it's so ridiculous, when Steeler died so suddenly I was further traumatized by the thought of him not having anyone he knew waiting for him when he crossed over the Rainbow Bridge. My beloved grandmother was the only person who had met Steeler (she died when Steeler was about 2) who had already passed away, so I kept telling myself that Steeler was hanging out with her in heaven. It was such a silly thought, but it really brought me comfort, just as I'm so comforted now by the fact that Celtic and his brother will be reunited soon.

A Heavy Heart

2011-05-10T09:30:00.001-05:00

I'm not even really sure where to start this post, because the news is very sad and my heart is very heavy. I don't want to be overdramatic at all, but our dogs are obviously a really big deal to us, and yesterday we made a really hard decision about our little man Celtic. We decided to cancel his surgery.

This decision might seem like a strange one to our friends who know we would do anything for our dogs, but Chad and I are thankfully very much in agreement on this. While we didn't come to the decision easily, I think we're at peace with it as much as we can be under the circumstances. Since his CT scan a week ago and the needle aspirates that preceded it, Celtic's overall health has declined significantly and his tumor has literally grown by the day.

We've certainly been worried about this rapid growth of late, but the noticeable size increase wasn't really so out of the ordinary. Often times when cancers are disturbed by a biopsy they tend to react by growing--Hope's first mast cell tumor did the same thing when it was aspirated back in 2007. Although the growth was concerning, we were still hopeful that yesterday morning's bloodwork would be better and today's surgery would be a go. While the anemia was a tiny bit improved, our regular vet Dr. Coles was alarmed by the tumor growth, Celtic's coloring and his overall malaise. He suggested we try and get back in to see Dr. Layton yesterday morning for another consult and possible early surgery, even though Dr. Layton usually only does emergency surgeries on Mondays.

We thankfully got in to see Dr. Layton right away, and as usual, she was her amazingly caring, compassionate and helpful self. She agreed that the tumor was significantly bigger than last week, and she expressed her concerns about his lethargy and immobility. The incredibly rapid growth confirmed her initial suspicion that the cancerous part of the tumor is a hemangiosarcoma, the extremely aggressive kind of cancer that killed Celtic's brother Steeler. Because the tumor had grown so much down his leg, she thought there was a very strong possibility that in order to remove it she would have to amputate his leg as well--or at least damage the nerves enough to make his leg useless. Chad and I both agreed that because of Celtic's age and significant problems with pain and weakness in his back legs, he wouldn't be able to walk on three legs. To us the amputation didn't seem like an acceptable outcome, and if Dr. Layton got started and realized that was her only option, they would just have to put Celtic to sleep by not letting him wake up from surgery. We couldn't bear the thought of his final memories being ones of fear and anxiety in a scary hospital.

There were other significant surgery risks that contributed to the decision, namely that Celtic might bleed to death due to the vascular involvement of the tumor, or that Dr. Layton would open him up only to find that surgical removal was just impossible because the tumor was so connected to muscles and other tissues. Even if the surgery went perfectly and Dr. Layton had been able to remove the bulk of the tumor and save the leg, we probably would have only been buying Celtic another 3-6 months before the remnants of the tumor took over and took his life. Since the odds of a perfect surgery were so slim, we didn't think it was a risk worth taking. We decided we would rather spend Celtic's last few weeks spoiling him rotten and showering him with all the love we can.

Obviously I regret that we didn't have Dr. Layton do the surgery last Wednesday, which she could have done. Since the surgery was risky even at that time, I really wanted to have a few more days to spend quality time with him in case something went wrong. Since my brother came home to Kansas on Sunday, I really wanted Eric to have a last visit with Celtic as well. Dr. Layton didn't think waiting six days would really matter, but of course she had no idea how aggressive his tumor would be. Knowing that we might have had him for a few more months instead of a few more weeks absolutely breaks my heart, but maybe not having to recover from surgery will mean less suffering for him in the long run. At least that's what I'm trying to tell myself.

Family Fiascos

2011-05-03T23:59:00.001-05:00

Wow--what a week. I apologize for the delay in blogging, but the family drama in the past 7 days has just been off the charts. If you've been following my tweets or seen my Facebook statuses or talked to us at all lately then you probably know the details of what's going on, but let's just say that last Wednesday through Friday was downright crazy. One of our family members was involved in a sort of domestic conflict that was extremely stressful and emotionally draining. We're thankful that the end result is ultimately going to be an improvement, but things are going to be a little chaotic around here for a while as we work through lots of changes!

After a couple of calmer days over the weekend, our next emotional ordeal started on Monday. Actually, the story really started over four years ago when Celtic had an egg-sized lipoma removed from his armpit, and then it continued when we took him to Hope's surgeon Dr. Layton a year later to see if she could remove it again, since it had grown back even larger than before. She couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't grown back after a second surgery, and Hope's surgery was obviously more pressing, and Celtic's armpit tumor wasn't really bothering him, so we made the decision not to do surgery at all.

Over the next several years Celtic's tumor continued to grow, and although it had grown to the size of a baseball, it didn't seem to impede his mobility, so we didn't worry too much about it. We asked the vet if there was any worry that it could have changed into something other than a lipoma, and our vet didn't think that was a possibility. We just kind of ignored it until a few weeks ago, about the time that Hope had her lipoma removed and her teeth cleaned. It suddenly looked as though Celtic was limping a little on his tumor arm, and within another week we could see his front leg was actually bowed out a bit. We decided to make another appointment with Dr. Layton in KC to see if she would still be willing to "debulk" it, knowing that in another few years it would probably grow back.

So I took him to Dr. Layton on Monday, and while her staff was working on an estimate for his surgery, she decided to take a needle aspirate of the mass. Unfortunately, the samples she took were not fatty tissue like she expected. She only got blood, which told her that the tumor was something more than a lipoma, and was connected in a way that meant it was going to be a lot more difficult to remove. Celtic stayed at the hospital for x-rays, a CT scan and blood work, and unfortunately we didn't get very good news from all the tests. The surgeon and a consulting radiologist are pretty sure that Celtic's tumor is cancer. This was certainly not what we expected to hear. Somehow his benign fatty tumor grew a malignant tumor, but we couldn't tell because the fatty tumor was so big!

To add insult to injury, he is also anemic (which might be because of the tumor--Dr. Layton's not sure) and he has a urinary tract infection! The poor guy is falling apart at the seams and we didn't even know! He goes for a walk every day, has a good appetite and generally seems pretty happy, so we were just completely clueless that there was anything (besides old age and his recent back problem) bothering him!

So our first option is to do nothing until Celtic can no longer walk because of the size of the tumor, at which point we'd likely have to put him to sleep because his tumor will be even more difficult to remove and his overall health will be too bad for surgery. There's also a possibility that the tumor could eventually burst, which would also be a terrible end result. Unfortunately, because of the rapid rate that this tumor has been growing as of late, we're afraid that either of these things could happen within a month or so.

Option two is to do surgery fairly soon, which we've tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday. Unfortunately, this surgery doesn't come without some pretty major risks. Because the tumor is so connected to Celtic's vascular system and attached to so much other tissue, the surgery may be fairly lengthy and complicated, and Celtic might not survive being anesthetized for as long as it takes to complete. Because of the vascular involvement, too much bleeding during surgery might be a problem and he might need a transfusion. Finally, opening up his cancerous tumor could cause it's growth to accelerate, making his cancer and overall health worse after surgery and not better.

With all that said, we've decided that the surgery at least has a chance of giving him a few more quality months of life. Dr. Layton thinks it's his best bet, and since we think she's astounding and amazing, we trust that it's the best decision. At least we're praying that it is! We're praying that if surgery isn't the best thing for him, the door on that option will close after his blood work is done on Monday. If his anemia or infection is worse at that time, surgery might not be an option at all, so I guess that will be our sign that we should forgo the surgery and just let nature take its course. Of course we're hoping that the infection can be treated with a few days of antibiotics and that some supplements might help the anemia, so hopefully our little man will be as healthy as possible for his surgery next Tuesday! We would appreciate your prayers between now and then!

Uneventful Easter

2011-04-26T22:35:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter weekend! Chad and I had a nice day together, although we didn't really do anything special or out of the ordinary for the holiday. Church was great, but since we're regular churchgoers it wasn't necessarily that special, except for the fact that our new church broke their old attendance record by 159 people. Our lunch together at Ingredient was marginal, which was a bummer since I usually LOVE their food--it's one of my favorite places in town! After that we tried to spend a little time outside to enjoy the sunshine that we hadn't seen in so long, but within just an hour or so the clouds came out and it was too gloomy and chilly to stay out on the deck. We spent the rest of the afternoon laying in bed with our laptops, planning out our upcoming vacation to Texas. Not very exciting stuff for such an important holiday!

Although Chad and I obviously have no special traditions for Easter, I have fond memories of the holiday from my childhood. I don't remember doing a big Easter dinner like other families do--I think maybe because all of our extended family members were connected to their own churches so no one was willing to travel. I do remember decorating and dying Easter eggs though, and then having Mom hide them all over the house (or outside if it was nice) for Eric and I to find Easter morning. We each got a small basket with some Easter candy, but I don't think we got presents like kids get these days. As Eric and I were discussing recently, somehow our society has turned Easter into mini-Christmas. I'm all for a few fun traditions, but it kind of makes me sad that most kids probably think that Easter is only about presents with some eggs and chocolate thrown in.

Having no traditions now that we're adults can certainly be a blessing since it gives us lots of freedom and flexibility. It also makes me a little bit sad, since lots of our friends were going to be with their families over the holiday. I guess since we're always interested in going to our own church for the resurrection celebration, we've never wanted to go out of town for Easter weekend. While my mom has sometimes come to Lawrence to join us at our service, now that she's connected to her home church in Topeka, we no longer invite her to come with us! We invited several other people to join us on Sunday morning, but it seems that everyone except for us was with family members!

Even though I didn't get to see any of my family on the holiday, I did get to see my dad and his wife Mim a few times in the weeks leading up to it. Although I obviously failed to blog about it in a timely manner, they were driving through the area in early April and stayed with us one night on their way to work at my dad's childhood home near Salina. A few days later we got to hang out a little more with them and Dad's sibling's at my aunt and uncle's in KC, which was great since I hadn't seen two of my aunts/uncles for several years! After staying with us that night, they went on to Texas for a week and then came back through and stayed one more night at our house before leaving for Ohio early the next morning. That night Dad and I spent an hour or so together at my favorite new yogurt place, Orange Leaf, but I realized as they were leaving in the morning that I hadn't taken a single picture while they were here. This was the one shot I got from their visit! I guess seeing family for a brief and early Easter is better than not seeing them at all! :)

It's Friday

2011-04-22T09:55:00.000-05:00

I just watched this amazing Youtube video that I wanted to share. It's a Good Friday sermon mixed with scenes from The Passion of the Christ. By itself, the sermon isn't nearly as moving, but with the movie footage, it's just incredible. If you're like me, you might need to get a tissue before watching!

Even if you don't believe that Jesus was who he said he was, you still have to be moved by anyone enduring that kind of horrific suffering! It's unfathomable.

The good news is, Sunday is on the way! Good Friday wouldn't be good at all without Easter! :)

Homemade Dog Biscuits

2011-04-21T14:50:00.001-05:00

Yesterday before I went to my last Eastlake "Growth Group" at lunch, I mixed up a batch of homemade dog biscuits, since the pups had been out for a few days and were asking for more. Ok, I'm kidding about that part. I don't pretend to know what my dogs are thinking, but I'm pretty sure if I could read their minds, they'd be saying, "Mom, please make some more of those awesome cookies!"

Anyway, this is about the fourth time I've made them, and I think I've finally perfected my recipe. I started out looking for a recipe online but couldn't find one I really liked, primarily because so many of them included ingredients that really weren't good for dogs (like a lot of flour). I really wanted mine to be pumpkin based, because pumpkin is supposed to be helpful for their digestion and other issues that our dogs tend to have. Since I never found a recipe with lots of pumpkin and very little flour, I started messing around trying to come up with my own.

The first batch pretty much tasted like whole wheat flour cookies--not good at all. Yes, I tasted them. Although my husband still thinks that's weird, I made them in my own kitchen with stuff that came out of my own fridge and pantry, so why wouldn't I try them? My first batches were also little too soft like cookies and not crunchy like I wanted them, so it took a few more tries to get the cooking time/temperature figured out.

Here's the final recipe I came up with, along with a picture of what they looked like before I put them into the oven yesterday.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pumpkin Carrot and Parsley Dog Biscuits

1 can pumpkin

1 egg

1-2 tbsp olive oil

2 cups old fashioned oats

3 tbsp fresh chopped or dried parsley

4 medium carrots

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

Boil carrots at least 15 minutes until soft. Mix together pumpkin, egg, oil, oats and parsley. Mash carrots into pumpkin mixture with a potato masher. The resulting dough will be chunky. Mix in flour. Spray round measuring teaspoon or melon baller with cooking spray and scoop balls onto greased cookie sheet. Flatten slightly with bottom of cup (also sprayed). Bake at 250 for 90 minutes and let harden in oven for several hours afterward. Store a week's worth in a sealed container in the pantry, with the remainder stored in the fridge.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm thinking I might make this my first recipe that I add to AllRecipes.com, but I think I need a more catchy name. Any great ideas?

Current Chatter

2011-04-19T23:16:00.001-05:00

Ok, it's official. I'm a complete nerd. I just created a Twitter account. I know lots of normal non-nerdy people have Twitter accounts just so they can live vicariously through celebrities by "following" them, but I created mine for an entirely different reason. I was feeling such guilt about not blogging regularly, I thought that having a Twitter feed updated regularly on my blog would give those few loyal people who check it frequently something new to look at when they visit.

I think the other reason I had the urge to start tweeting is because I have so many friends and family members who always ask me about how I'm enjoying my "retirement." It can be a little annoying, only because I don't feel retired. I'm always busy, either doing things to manage our household (errands, cooking, housework) or helping my mom manage hers. Somehow I feel like I have to prove my busyness to people who think I'm sitting around watching soap operas and eating bonbons all day, which I know makes absolutely no sense at all. Why do I care what other people think? That's nerdiness and insecurity mixed together!

In my defense, I'm not such a nerd that I actually understand how to read and respond to other people's tweets. It's like a completely different language, with all it's @s and #s and other weird symbols. I have no idea what it all means, so hopefully I'll figure that out in time.

When I opened my account and Twitter invited me to start by following 10 other people's tweets, I was seriously so clueless I didn't even know who to pick. I found and starting following my brother (who I knew tweeted because of Facebook), the lead singer of Old 97's (since I'd heard in some interview he did that he had really funny tweets), a few DJs from KLOVE, our new church, and President Obama (because that was one of the random choices they offered me). I had no idea who else to pick, so I had Twitter check my gmail contacts for some tweeting friends. I found a few more people to follow, like my friends Tish and Matt, and since Tish has followed me back, I now have my first follower!

Honestly though, I have no aspirations for people to actually follow me. I'm just using it to update Luce Chatter with some chatter when there isn't time for my normal blog chatter!

Happy Hope

2011-04-15T22:39:00.000-05:00

Most of my friends probably already know this from Facebook, but we got great news this morning from our veterinarian! He called to let us know that he'd received the pathology report and that the strange growth he removed from Hope's mouth was benign. Hooray! It was nothing at all to worry about--just some inflamed tissue. This was actually sort of ironic, since when the vet first told us about the growth Chad expressed his hope that it was just an injury from poking herself in the mouth. Since she's constantly eating things that aren't food, it's not a huge shock that she probably injured herself while doing so at some point!

Hope won't get her stitches out until next week, but really that will just be a formality--she feels good and hasn't even seemed to notice the incision on her chest. As always, she's tough as nails!

Photography Fail

2011-04-12T22:56:00.000-05:00

One thing that I've completely failed to do in the last few months is practice my photography skills. I've busted out the camera a few times here and there, but I haven't had time to plan actual photo sessions, which is really what I'd like to practice! This is of course partially due to the winter--it's nearly impossible to do photo sessions outside in Kansas in December/January/February/March. Now that April is here, I can finally start scheduling some practice sessions! I've got a session for some engagement pictures for our friends Mike and Tiffany on the calendar already, and I've talked to several other friends who are interested in doing spring sessions as well. I'm not sure that I could ever make a career out of photography, and I certainly don't feel ready to charge anyone money for my pictures, but I still love the idea of doing photo sessions for fun!

About the only time I attempted to take a few decent pictures over the winter was last month during a day with my little friend Eli. I brought my camera to his house thinking we might have some decent light in front of a window, but since it turned out to be a cloudy day the light inside wasn't really very good at all. I got a few shots that were cute, but overall I didn't feel like the "shoot" was very successful! It's kind of fun to look back on the pictures though, mostly because Eli has changed so much since last month! Since then he's had his first haircut, and his new blond curls are taking over the dark hair he had when he was born, which has finally almost all grown out!

Although the quality/photography isn't great, I thought at least his parents might enjoy a few quick pics of Elijah!

Unhappy Hope

2011-04-07T23:00:00.001-05:00

Today our dear little girl Hope took another step in her quest to regain her title of The Most Expensive Dog in the World. She went to the vet to have her teeth cleaned and have a humongous growth removed off her chest, and before she was done she'd had a second growth removed from her mouth and a couple of teeth extracted as well. Poor girl! Since about 4:00 when I brought her home she's been wandering around the house whimpering, staggering, dozing, getting up, drooling blood and then wandering around whimpering a little more. I feel so bad for her since she's clearly uncomfortable--who wouldn't be with all those stitches in her chest and in two places in her mouth too!

The crazy thing is, several years ago, Celtic had a fatty (non-cancerous) tumor removed from the exact same place on his sternum. If they weren't such hairy little children they'd have matching scars! Thankfully, just like Celtic's tumor of 2007, Hope's sternum growth was nothing more than a lipoma--it had just gotten so huge and unsightly we decided to have it taken off since she needed her teeth cleaned anyway. You can see it pretty well in our Christmas picture video, and it had definitely grown quite a bit in the four short months since then. I'm glad we got it taken off, but her resulting incision is obviously pretty big and icky!

The growth that our vet found in her mouth while cleaning her teeth was apparently way smaller, but unfortunately he wasn't sure exactly what it was, so he sent it off to the lab for analysis. We're hopeful that in a few days we'll find out that it's nothing to worry about, and hopefully by then she'll be a little more comfortable than she is now. Although we can't see the stitches, her mouth is pretty icky too. Thankfully there's been a reduction in bloody slobber since this picture was taken a few hours ago!

Hopefully Hope will have a good night's rest that will help speed her healing! She's definitely sleepy enough for it!

Eastlake

2011-04-06T23:50:00.000-05:00

I mentioned briefly last month that we were going to a new church, which might have been a surprise to some of our friends who didn't know we had actually left our old one. We had been at our previous church for 7 years or so, and although we made it through several pastoral changes during that time, we started feeling uncomfortable there during last fall's mid-term election. When the pastor started using political jargon that sounded like it had been pulled directly from Fox News, I guess you could say that was our cue to exit. We just don't believe that Jesus would support any particular political party!

Anyway, that was what led us to start looking for a different church, and after visiting about four different churches in town over a period of several months, we came to one that we both really enjoyed--Eastlake Community Church. It's a very young church that just started meeting in late 2009, and initially we weren't moved to go for a visit because we thought the regular fliers they send out seemed a little too hip and cool for us. Then one day while I was volunteering at the food pantry, a new couple came in and wrote down on their information form that Eastlake was their home church. When I started asking them about it, they were just so excited they couldn't stop talking about the church and the pastor. They said that Eastlake made them excited to get up for church every Sunday, which definitely intrigued me and made me want to try it out. Chad and I visited the next day, really enjoyed the music and the message, and we've been there ever since. The more I learn about the church from my "growth group" leader, the more I like their philosophy of having a service specifically for people who might not enjoy or feel comfortable in a more traditional church.

So our new church is gearing up for Easter in a few weeks, and they're inviting the whole Lawrence community for the holiday and the series of messages that follows by putting together a bunch of videos and a special website. Check out the first promo below--and let us know if you want to join us for Easter Sunday!

Love Episode 1 from EastLake Community Church on Vimeo.

Same Old Sadness

2011-03-30T22:45:00.000-05:00

I guess it's time I finally address the elephant in the room: our very disappointing early exit from the NCAA tournament on Sunday. As the whole sports world knows, KU got knocked out of the Big Dance yet again by a much lower seed. Ugh. While I was obviously broken-hearted, I wasn't really that surprised. Although we do have the 5th most wins of any team in the NCAA tournament, we definitely have a long history of getting upset, starting with the painful loss to UTEP in 1992 after which I laid on my bed in the Jayhawk Towers bawling my eyes out. It just happens over and over--we can't seem to handle the pressure of being favored big against teams that feel absolutely no pressure to beat us. In fact, I feel like I could almost just copy and paste the blog post I wrote last March, replacing Sherron with Tyrel and Northern Iown with VCU. So many of the game problems were similar--missed free throws, tense play, lights out shooting by the other team--and the bad weather was similar right down to the snow. Thankfully, this year on loss day we only ended up with an inch or so and not the 6 or so inches we had last year!

Although it was rough getting knocked out by an 11 seed this year, I was proud of our boys for making it to the Elite Eight and for being the last of the number 1 seeds to go home. It makes me feel so much better when other number ones fall early. This year Pittsburgh got knocked out in the second round like we did last year and I was so excited! It's not just the Jayhawks who have off days during the tourney!

Speaking of off days, we could not have had a more off shooting day on Sunday. We couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. We were awful from the charity stripe, from the 3-point line, and even from inside the paint! While it's not unusual for one or even two Jayhawks to have an off night, rarely have we ever had practically every guy on the court go cold in the same game! It just wasn't our year, clearly, and VCU was definitely feeling it.

Since I hadn't watched nearly as much of the tourney this year as I normally do, and since I was sort of preparing myself for the possibility of another upset, I really and truly believed that I would be able to better control my emotions in the event of a loss. Um, yeah...not so much. I really really thought I wouldn't cry this year, and I can't believe that after 19 years of crying after every tournament loss I still do. It just never ceases to be gut-wrenching. Looking at the faces of those players, especially a terrific kid like Tyrel, and thinking of how hard they've worked all year, and then thinking about how sad I am and multiplying it by a thousand to imagine how sad they must be--it just makes me cry every time. For us, there's always next year, but for those seniors, they'll never get the chance to dance again!

I hope they know that even when they lose we still love our Jayhawks!

Sweet and Elite

2011-03-26T19:43:00.000-05:00

I'm so embarrassed that we are smack in the middle of March Madness and I haven't even blogged once about basketball. Even more embarrassingly, until yesterday the only full game I'd even watched was the KU/Illinois game last weekend. Even more embarrassingly, this was the first time in about the last 20 years that I didn't enter a bracket pool, and the first time since the invention of online pools that I didn't even fill out an online bracket!! I know this sounds like complete insanity, since obviously all my friends I love love love the Big Dance. I feel like I should turn in my superfan card.

It's kind of like I'm living in the basketball bizarro world this year. Normally I do tons of research and study each matchup carefully before picking my teams. Since the week the tourney started was also the week I was busy getting ready for the party, I just never had a free moment at the computer. I kept thinking I would at least fill out a bracket at the last minute, but Wednesday night when the online brackets were due, Eric and I were at Mom's until after midnight going through old photo albums, trying to find pictures for the slideshow!

The Thursday of the tournament I did actually fill out my annual "dream" bracket and "reality" bracket on paper before I looked at any of the scores, just so I could take more of an interest in any of the games I was able to watch. The problem with that is that I picked the games so poorly, by the time I was able to watch this weekend I barely had any teams left in my bracket! As the Elite Eight games started today, I seriously had two teams out of eight still on my reality bracket and one team out of eight on my dream bracket. I always wondered if my research was really doing me any good, and I guess this year we've answered that age old question. Without studying I completely stink--with research I only stink as much as the rest of the country.

Ultimately though, it doesn't really matter how crappy my bracket is overall, because the one team I have left in both brackets is the only one that counts. It was so awesome to watch our Jayhawks manhandle Richmond yesterday in the Sweet Sixteen and we're hoping to another win tomorrow against VCU for a trip to the Final Four!!!

Mom's Big Day

2011-03-24T21:48:00.001-05:00

I've been absent from blogging for the last couple of weeks primarily because of the big 65th birthday shindig we threw at our house last Saturday for my lovely mother. There was so much to do in the weeks leading up to the event--reminder sending, housecleaning, menu planning, grocery shopping, food preparing, airport shuttling, decoration purchasing, present buying, houseguest hosting, and picture searching/scanning for slideshow making. My brother flew in last Tuesday (which was our mom's actual birthday) and was very helpful in getting a lot of this done, which was great since my dear husband was sick in bed a lot during the last couple of weeks!

Overall, I have to say that the party was a big success. Although it poured down rain and even hailed for a little while in the early afternoon, we still had over 40 people attend. My mom looked beautiful and had a really great time visiting with so many very dear friends. Everyone was very complimentary of the food, of the decorations and of our slideshow. My friend Leigh Ann made fantastic cupcakes which were so beautiful people didn't want to eat them. I took tons of pictures of the festivities and my brother took a bunch too, and most of them turned out pretty good. I hope to eventually put them into a scrapbook with all of mom's birthday cards, but for now the online album will have to do.

Although the party itself went very well, the evening before the big day, as we were trying to prep all the food and finish picking out the music for the slideshow, Mom and I took a trip to the airport to pick up her very dear friend Linda, who was flying in from Montana for the party. Unfortunately, the construction traffic on I-70 put a big kink in our plans, since the normal trip of 50-55 minutes took us almost 90! After getting to the airport so late and then having dinner at Zona Rosa (which is always busy on a Friday night), we didn't get home until way later than anticipated. I didn't get nearly as much of the food prepared as I had hoped, and I still stayed up until about 1 a.m. working on mom's slideshow!

The point of that whole story was just to make an excuse as to why the food wasn't quite done when people started arriving on Saturday. I think everything was on the table at 1:10 (the open house started at 1), but I would have much preferred to have the whole thing set up and the kitchen cleaned prior to guests getting here! Thankfully, Chad's mom Joanie and our friend Linda were hugely helpful in refilling the food as needed during the afternoon and even assembling appetizers!

Other than the delayed food, there was only one other tiny detail that I didn't anticipate that could have been kind of disastrous. About 3o minutes into the party someone requested coffee, and not only had I not made any (we only made yummy punch), I only had my tiny one person coffee pot that makes 20 ounces at a time! I never thought about the fact that almost everyone in my mom's generation would want coffee at our afternoon party. Thankfully there was a newly opened bag of coffee, so my awesome mother-in-law started brewing, and she didn't stop the rest of the afternoon! We used the 12 little cups from our china set (that had never been used) along with all the other random mugs in our house, and Joanie's husband Rory still ended up washing dishes for at least an hour. My dear coffee-hating husband even got into the coffee-making action, which is a sight I thought I'd never see in my life! I was so thankful for all my awesome kitchen helpers that helped to avert a crazy coffee crisis. Our successful party was definitely a group effort!

That's "Owl" Theme and We're Sticking To It

2011-03-10T23:46:00.002-06:00

This afternoon I finished editing and uploading the plethora of pictures from Leigh Ann's shower on Sunday, and I realized once I had uploaded them all that there wasn't any reason I needed to wait until they were finished to blog about the event. In my mind I guess I imagined putting the pictures into a slideshow on the blog. Now that I realize there are 111 pictures in the bunch, I'm thinking that probably only Leigh Ann herself and a few of our other friends who were there would probably be interested in that many pictures! If you get the urge though and want to see all of the food, decorations, gifts, guests and the game, please feel free to check the full album out here.

When my friends Melissa, Ellen, Corrie and I first got together to discuss the planning of Leigh Ann's shower, Mel came up with the great idea of using an owl theme, partially because Leigh Ann had recently picked out some baby bedding with owls, and partially because her husband Nate recently finished his doctorate in the English department and is a literary brainiac. We thought everyone bringing a book for baby braniac's library would go along well with the wise owl theme. Once we had the theme picked out we began to go a little crazy with it! Later Melissa found out Leigh Ann had changed her mind on the bedding, but the owl themed baby shower was already well on its way!

At our planning meeting, I volunteered to plan the menu, for which I chose foods that were either bird/tree related or in the color of the green/pink/brown/orange invitations we picked out. I made a fruit plate, a veggie tray, some little bird nest egg salads, ham asparagus roll-ups, spinach/artichoke dip on a tree shaped platter with a rye bread trunk, and some little bird seed snacks that are Chad's new favorite snack at our house! Melissa made festive little labels for all the food, Corrie ordered some adorable little cakes to match the invites, and Ellen made some awesome punch and bought colorful flowers to decorate her lovely home perfectly. Here are just a few of my favorite pics of the decor and food from the day.

The other thing that I had so much fun doing for the shower was making a shower game, even though none of us are big baby shower game people and weren't even sure we wanted to have one. I played a similar game when at my friend Karen's baby shower just a couple of weekends before, and it just seemed too perfect for the theme--and it actually seemed like something Leigh Ann might enjoy! I went online and found pictures of 20 famous people when they were babies, and then I printed out all their pictures onto tree branches (which I scanned from the invites) and pasted them into a tree trunk on poster board. Because I'm not very artistic, my tree ended up looking like the Washington Monument, but whatever. I put the celebrity's names in a list and numbered the pictures so that the guests could match the names to the numbers, and I think most people enjoyed it. Even if they didn't enjoy it, at least it wasn't ridiculously cheesy like so many baby shower games! It took me almost an entire day to find the pictures and make the tree, but I had a fun time doing it!

I'm hoping that all of Sunday's guests enjoyed the food and festivities as well as showering the lovely Leigh Ann and baby W with gifts and good wishes. It might not have lived up to the most amazing baby shower that Leigh Ann planned for our friend Amy a year ago, but with our four brains working together, I think we were able to come pretty close!

Bieberrific Birthday

2011-03-09T22:50:00.000-06:00

Today is my amazing friend Cara's birthday, and even though I sent her a Jib Jab card and left her a message on Facebook and sent her a text, I still have to wish her a very happy birthday on the blog tonight. Cards, texts and other messages just don't cut it when you have a friend who is such an inspiration to so many people in so many ways. In the last couple of years, our friend Cara has handled the adversities of life with incredible grace, poise, maturity, faith and godliness--and she's not even 30 years old yet! All my other birthday wishes didn't seem adequate for such an amazing person, and my Jib Jab card certainly didn't seem adequate since I couldn't find an appropriate card that I could stick her head onto. Since I didn't have the perfect card, I decided to make her a special music video instead. I can now say I've watched my first ever Justin Bieber video. It's kind of appropriate since Cara's still a youngin' herself!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Happy birthday, Cara! :)

Decompression

2011-03-06T20:22:00.000-06:00

This evening Chad and I are just laying here lounging with our laptops, and I'm definitely enjoying the time to decompress a little. This might have been evident by my lack of blogging, but the last week was a busy one, and I'm definitely relieved that it's behind me. Since my last post just over a week ago, my schedule has included lots of activities that aren't part of my normal routine as chief homemaker. We've taken our nephews sledding and hosted them for a sleepover, I've started a new small group at a new church, we've taken all the dogs to the vet, I've been to my nephew's basketball game in Kansas City, and I've helped to plan and host a baby shower for my friend Leigh Ann, for which I made almost all the food. I think this was all complicated by the fact that I still did my volunteer shift at the food pantry, still made my regular weekly trip to Topeka, spent my regular afternoon with my baby friend Eli, had a medicated dog who needed to go out every couple of hours, a crazy dog who needed to be re-crate trained (more on that later) and a sick husband whose congested snoring didn't allow for much sleep on my part. Whew. Now that I write it all down, I understand why I'm a little pooped!

This week I'm hoping to get caught up on my sleep and my blogging! More posts coming soon!

The Whites

2011-02-25T21:43:00.000-06:00

Now that Celtic Watch 2011 has ended so happily, I can actually get back to blogging about our regular mundane life. Namely, I can blog about our laundry--in particular, the whites. Exciting, I know. This is what happens in our house when you sort the laundry on the closet floor but haven't had the chance to actually put said laundry into the washer.

The laundry becomes Hope's dog bed, despite the fact that there are three other dog beds within a 20 foot radius. This just in: Hope is weird.

There's one other thing that happens in our house when you leave the dirty whites unattended.

Celtic turns dirty socks into coveted toys, carrying them all over the house, hiding them from Fresco and Hope, and treating them like little stuffed animals. It's weird too, but so darn adorable. Clearly he's feeling way better.

Since I like to try and give my pups equal face time on the blog, I have to share an equally adorable picture of our baby Fresco, even though it has nothing to do with the laundry. This totally looks staged, I know, but the other day when we had all these extra blankets in the bedroom from my night on the floor with Celtic, I was using one on the bed and Fresco was laying next to me. When I got up and threw the blanket off myself, Fresco somehow ended up like this.

Seriously, could he be any cuter? He laid there wrapped up in the blanket until Chad pulled it off his face. He's such an agreeable little munchkin!

Wobbly Walking

2011-02-23T23:24:00.000-06:00

I'm super excited to report that our little guy's recovery took a 180 degree turn today! As you can see from the picture, today Celtic actually began standing and walking on his own. Although the day started much the same as yesterday, with Celtic moping in bed until after noon, when I took him outside for his first potty break things began to change. With the help of our homemade support sling like this one, he walked all over the yard as we enjoyed the beautiful weather. I tried to get him to lay down in the sunshine with his brother for a while, but after just a few minutes he got up on his own and headed for the door. With sling assistance, he walked all the way to the door, up the ramp in the garage, into the kitchen to the water bowl, and across the bedroom to the dog bed. I parked him in his little bed and headed back to the kitchen to get dinner into the crock pot, and a couple of seconds later I realize that Celtic is standing right next to me! He'd gotten up on his own and walked all the way into the kitchen to beg for treats! Now that's the Celtic we know and love!

I tried to get him to lay down in the kitchen to no avail, so I carried Celtic back to our bed, thinking he would stay put this time. As I'm finishing up the dinner preparations, I see Celtic standing up and heading down the little steps up to our bed--all on his own! I ran to help him, but he made it to the bottom on his own without falling. He was absolutely determined to come search for food I might be dropping in the kitchen. I realized the only way I could keep him resting in bed the rest of the afternoon was by staying in bed with him!

I helped him outside again after dinner, and this time I let him roam the yard a little without his sling and he did just fine. He eventually laid down in the grass for a while and enjoyed the beautiful weather before I helped him back inside and into bed. When Chad got home from work and we both ended up in the kitchen, seconds later Celtic was down the steps and walking into the kitchen on his own. I think he was trying to show off his improved mobility!

We tried to keep him in bed most of the evening to rest, but even while resting he demonstrated other behaviors that are completely back to normal--namely his insistence on being petted all the time. He was a complete nuisance most of the evening with his pawing, nudging and flailing as he attempted to get attention. That's our boy.

Thanks again to everyone for the emails, phone calls, texts and comments to let us know you were thinking of him! We appreciate all your thoughts and prayers--which have definitely been answered!

Little Man

2011-02-22T22:48:00.000-06:00

I was hoping that tonight I'd be able to post a terrific update on our little man, but unfortunately we've had kind of a one step forward, one step back kind of day. I guess we can be thankful it wasn't two steps back though! In the middle of the night we were pleasantly surprised (albeit a little big startled) to find that Celtic had gotten up on his own and taken several steps toward the door under his own power. That was huge progress from the day before, for sure. Unfortunately, when we got up a few hours later he refused to eat breakfast and was super lethargic, which was a huge bummer. All day long he laid in bed and didn't show much interest in anything. He seemed super depressed and had lots of episodes of panting, so I'm worried that his pain isn't really under control. He looked darn cute in his little pile of blankets with the stuffed doggie Chad shoved into his arms, but he was definitely pretty bummed out, as were we.

With that said, as the day went on, he gained a little more energy and life, and even walked a few more steps one other time this evening before his wobbly little back legs gave out. He ate his dinner with no problems, and his spunky personality shined through a little when he growled at his brother, protecting his new little dog toy that he pretended not to like. Hopefully tomorrow that spunkiness will be back in full force and the use of his legs will continue to improve as well!

Thanks to all of our wonderful friends and family members for all the emails and phone calls the last couple of days to check on us. We appreciate the love, positive thoughts and prayers so much!

Sleepless Night

2011-02-21T23:41:00.000-06:00

On Saturday night I was editing pictures from our weekend trip to St. Louis, with every intention of sharing them in a blog post on Sunday. Sunday, however, had other plans for us. Our little old man Celtic had seemed slightly more stiff than normal the previous evening, but Sunday morning he woke up at his normal early hour and ate breakfast and went outside. He came back in and went back to bed with us for another hour or so before we got up to go to church, which was also completely normal. When we got home from church, however, it was clear that something was wrong. He was still laying on the bed, but Chad noticed that the dog treat I'd given him before we left was still sitting next to him uneaten. For Celtic not to eat is super unusual and super worrisome.

Chad tried to get him to get up, but Celtic refused. Even when Chad picked him up off the bed and stood him on the floor, Celtic wouldn't go anywhere. He didn't cry or whimper, but he laid back down right where he was. A few minutes later though, he got up and moved himself a few feet to the dog bed, so we started thinking that Celtic might just be hamming it up for the attention, which he has definitely been known to do in his life.

Thinking he might be faking, we tried to coax him up again to no avail, so Chad carried him outside to potty. He took a few steps and lifted his leg, but then turned right around so Chad could carry him back in to his dog bed. He still refused water and even leftover hash browns from our brunch, so we started contemplating a trip to the emergency vet, because Celtic is certainly not that good of an actor. We decided to wait a few more hours to see if he would improve on his own first, so I went off to a baby shower and Chad took off for the driving range.

When Chad arrived home from golfing, he tried to get Celtic up to potty again, but this time Celtic couldn't even stand. Since he was clearly getting worse, Chad texted and called me to come home, but unfortunately my ringer was off during the shower. When he didn't hear back from me in 20 minutes, he hopped in the car and drove over to the shower to get me. I was obviously a little alarmed to see him, so needless to say I gave my friend Karen a quick hug, said thanks to the hostess and ran out the door! We zoomed home, got Celtic in the car and were on our way to Stone House Animal Hospital in Topeka.

Poor Celtic was alarmingly lethargic and unresponsive during the drive, and even after we arrived he didn't show any interest in any of the people and pets in the waiting room. Chad carried him into the exam room and laid him on the table and he didn't display the tiniest bit of resistance or curiosity about his surroundings. We were happy to have Dr. Carder, the vet who fought so hard to save Celtic's brother Steeler 4 1/2 years ago, come in to give Celtic an exam. He didn't seem to think there was actually any true paralysis, since Celtic seemed to react to touches of his feet and tail, but touches of Celtic's spine seemed to cause a lot of pain. His hope was that it was some sort of spinal injury that would heal with some steroids and lots of rest. He said it was also possible that Celtic had something more serious going on, such as a tumor on his spinal cord, but there's no way to tell without a CAT scan, which could only be done at K-State's Veterinary Hospital. His recommendation was to wait a day to see if the steroids started working, and then decide whether to take him to K-State if he doesn't improve.

So Dr. Carder gave Celtic a shot of steroids, a shot of painkillers, and a third shot of a muscle relaxer, just to sedate him enough to drain his bladder, so that he could rest his back the rest of the night without getting up again to potty. Once Celtic was pretty much out of it, they wheeled him back to the treatment room, which happened to be the same room where we watched Steeler die that fateful night in 2006. As if the day hadn't been emotional enough, I about lost it when I walked into that room. I turned right around and went back to the exam room, telling myself that Celtic wouldn't know I was missing since he wasn't awake anyway.

After his bladder was done draining, the vet tech supplied me with Celtic's oral steroids and I paid our bill while Chad pulled the car around back so our little man could be loaded into it. When I finally got out to the car after standing in line (it was super busy Sunday afternoon in the emergency clinic), Celtic was loaded in, but he wasn't doing well. He was only taking about one labored breath every ten seconds or so, and Chad and I weren't at all comfortable with driving him home that way. I went back in and got the vet tech, who then went and got the vet, who came out to check on Celtic in the car. Dr. Carder agreed that his labored breathing was very abnormal and thought that Celtic had just become so relaxed with the sedative he was forgetting to breath. His heartbeat was strong and his circulation was okay, but the doctor went and grabbed yet another shot to reverse the sedative. After about 5 minutes of us and the vet watching his breathing carefully, Celtic finally woke up and started breathing regularly again, so Chad and I started breathing regularly too!

After we got home and put Celtic to bed, our worries still weren't over. We still couldn't get him to eat, move, respond, drink water or even lift his head. He just laid there staring into space, refusing to sleep and also refusing to acknowledge us. We petted and rubbed and loved on him all evening, but by bedtime things had just gotten worse. He had started panting, which generally indicates a dog is in pain, and the shallow pants soon turned into labored breathing. He was so listless and lifeless, Chad and I tried to prepare ourselves for the worst, since we weren't even sure he was going to make it through the night. I made myself a bed on the floor next to him, where I slept fitfully, waking up every few minutes to check and see if he was still breathing. Needless to say, it was a bit of a sleepless night.

Crazily enough, at about 3 a.m. I opened my eyes to see Celtic staring at me, with his head raised a little and his eyes bright. He acted like he wanted to get up, so I offered him some water and was thrilled that he drank heartily! After a few drinks he calmed back down into his bed and relaxed, staring off into space again.

When I woke up at 6:30 Celtic was awake, alert, responsive and hungry. He ate his breakfast in bed and drank more water before Chad carried him out to potty, and although he still couldn't really stand on his own, he kind of moved his legs like he was walking when Chad lifted his tummy with a towel. He's spent most of his day in bed and still isn't walking on his own, but each time he's gone outside today he's moved those little legs more and more. He's eating well and totally interested in any food item anywhere in the house, and his stubborn and determined personality is definitely shining through again. Yesterday we were worried we'd lost our little man, but today we are definitely more hopeful. We know his troubles aren't over yet, but we're thankful that today was better than yesterday and praying that tomorrow will be better than today. We know we can't keep Celtic with us forever, but it just seems too soon to lose him considering he was sprinting around in the snow just barely over a month ago!

Abe

2011-02-15T19:30:00.001-06:00

On Friday Chad and I went to KC to visit our friends Vikkie and Brett and their newest bundle of joy, Abram Reo. Our intention was to bring the new parents a home cooked dinner, but since Chad had a hankering for Oklahoma Joe's, we ended up bringing them restaurant food instead. We can hardly resist OK Joe's when we're in the general vicinity, and thankfully Vikkie and Brett like it too, so hopefully they didn't mind too much.

Really there's no other point to this story except that it was great to hang out with these fun friends we don't get to see enough, and it was so fun to meet their adorable little son, who was less than two weeks old. I had a blast taking pictures of his perfect little face and could have done it for hours if Chad hadn't eventually dragged me away. The pictures would have been tons better if I'd had some natural light, but there are still a few that were pretty cute. Maybe Vikkie will let me come back sometime soon during the day when the light is better and have a practice photo session with Abe and his big brother Hutch (whose birthday is today--happy birthday, Hutch!), who was at Grandpa's house on Friday. Until then, here are just a few pictures of cute little Abram!

Babe

2011-02-14T06:30:00.002-06:00

For Valentine's Day, I'd like to give a shout out to my Valentine and best friend of the last 18 years. I love you, Bestest! Thanks for being my Valentine!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

This present is really pretty lame compared to the awesome V-Day gift my wonderful husband got me, which he had me open last night: two tickets to the Old 97's show in St. Louis this coming Friday! Road trip for us--I'm so excited!

Planning for a Parent Party

2011-02-12T22:13:00.002-06:00

Clearly I've done a really crappy job keeping up with my blog lately, and I know that confuses a lot of my friends who are picturing me as retired these days. I'm sure it sounds strange, but the last few weeks have just been so busy I've had very little free time. I spend a couple of afternoons a week in Topeka with my mom and another afternoon during the week with my little friend Eli, and the other two days of the week are filled up with errands and housework. It's crazy how I can fill my days up so easily without ever turning on the TV!

One of the things that's been keeping me busy lately is party planning, as I've been working on preparations for a big upcoming event--my mom's 65th birthday party! My brother and I decided that for Mom's big birthday we wanted to have a gathering of all her close friends and family members, since we've never done anything like that for her before. Sixty-five seemed like the perfect age for a big party, so I put together invitations, gathered emails and mailing addresses, and have since been taking lots of RSVPs. We already have 25 confirmed guests and another 10 or so that are probable. It should be so much fun! Here's the invitation I sent out via email that I designed myself, which I thought turned out okay. I did another version without Mom's picture that went out through the mail.

It will be so wonderful to see so many of Mom's dearest friends--many of whom we haven't seen in years! I'm so looking forward to the big event, and also looking forward to planning the food, entertainment and decorations. It won't be anything too terribly elaborate, but it still should be fun!

Black and Gold to Crimson and Blue

2011-02-08T21:10:00.000-06:00

Obviously, Chad and I were super disappointed in the outcome of the Super Bowl on Sunday, since our Pittsburgh Steelers were not victorious. I was super proud of my dear husband though, because he didn't let the Steelers loss upset his entire week--or even his entire evening! Since his Steelers had already won a couple of recent Super Bowls, and since they weren't really favored to win this one, and since their starting Pro Bowl center was out injured, and since the Steelers didn't really play well enough to deserve the win, I guess he was more prepared for the final score. He was able to take the loss in stride and not lament too much about it, which was nice for both of us.

We didn't actually get to watch any of the game together, since Chad was upstairs in our bedroom and I was downstairs entertaining our guests, which included our friends Nate and Leigh Ann, my friend Andrea and her family, and our friend Emily and her family, who were visiting Lawrence from Salt Lake City. It was great to see Emily and get to visit with friends and enjoy lots of good food, but needless to say, with 7 adults, 3 kids, a baby and some occasional dogs in the basement, I didn't get to focus on the game a ton. I didn't get to see many commercials either, but from what I hear they weren't that funny anyway.

While Chad and I were both decked out in our black and gold for the Steelers on Sunday, we definitely had to change our colors for yesterday's basketball game, since our Jayhawks took on the evil Missouri Tigers, who also sport black and gold. Thankfully this game went our way, and although it wasn't nearly as important as the Super Bowl, it felt great to stomp those Tigers by almost 20 points.

Speaking of awesome Jayhawks, a friend posted this video from last night's game onto Facebook today, and I think it's pretty darn cool. Just recently I was telling my friend Amber that it was my dream to be part of a flash mob someday--I just love the "spontaneity" and the joy they bring!

97's at The Bottleneck

2011-02-02T22:50:00.000-06:00

All this talk by me about my important blog post may have misled my tens of readers into thinking it was something important to normal people as opposed to something important to just me! As you can see from the title, I was just very excited to share the story of what made last weekend awesome--our 10th live Old 97's show!

Seeing the 97's at The Bottleneck was a little nostalgic for me, because just over 10 years ago this was the first place we ever saw them, after our friend Jason sent us a few bootleg CDs of their concerts and then invited us to the show. The rest is history, a history which I don't really need to repeat since I already chronicled the whole thing here. In fact, as I was looking for that particular post I realized how many times I've actually blogged about them. It's kind of insane and I'm really slightly embarrassed. I can just see them Googling themselves and finding this blog and then recognizing me as the crazy-eyed person who rambled incoherently to Murry in Kansas City last summer. They're probably slightly frightened at my obsessiveness, which wouldn't be that weird since my husband is slightly frightened by it too.

So ANYWAY, clearly we had a fantastic time at the show, and I'd be repeating myself if I told you how great they were live. They played 9 of the 12 songs from their new album, which meant that we missed a lot of the old classics (Niteclub, guys...everyone in the audience was cheering for Niteclub!), but almost all of the new ones they played we really liked. Even those that we liked just a little on the new CD, we liked tons more live. While there were tons of old songs I missed, I at least got to hear my most favorite song ever--Four Leaf Clover--which they hadn't played in several of the last shows I'd been to.

What made the show even more fun was my location, since I left Chad and our other friends to push my way to the front immediately after the opening band was finished. I made it to the second row, which was fine since clearly the people in the first row were also hard core fans who'd waited there during the entire opening act as well. Since I was alone, I quickly made friends with a woman by herself who looked about my age (I realized she was just a little older when she talked about her daughter's recent wedding!) who is from New York but now lives in Olathe. She was at her sixth 97's show and was wearing a t-shirt signed by the whole band. She was just about as serious as I was about being there--it was great to meet a fellow superfan!

Besides the great performance, we also had a terrific time hanging out with our friend Jason and his mom, dad, sister, brother and future sister-in-law until the wee hours of the morning. Spending time with his family is always a plus! While we were sitting around at the Bottleneck out after the show, Murry came out into the bar and I went over to take his picture again--this time not for myself but for Jason's sister Brittany. I specifically kept my mouth shut and just ran the camera, knowing full well that I'd sound like a complete moron if I said anything to him. At least I learned from my mistake last time!

A little later as Murry was heading out to their tour bus parked out front, he walked right up to Jason's parents and started chatting with them. He was just so nice! We all thought he probably recognized them since they are at so many 97's shows in the area and they are almost always the oldest people there. We got a picture of Murry with them as well, and then in probably the most hilarious moment of the evening, Jason's future sister-in-law Morgan offered Murry and the band a place to stay for the night. Murry very graciously declined, but somehow the conversation still turned into a discussion of their accommodations and the fact that they had an extra shower and the band was welcome to use it. Uh--awkward but hilarious! It was so nice to see someone else babble incoherently in Murry's presence!

As usual, the pictures with my point-and-shoot camera were pretty terrible, so I picked just a few from the night that I doctored up with Photoshop to make them a tiny bit interesting. There are a few others from after the show too--although I didn't capture the exact moment that Morgan invited Murry into her shower. Classic!

The Blizzard of 2011

2011-02-01T23:52:00.002-06:00

The "important" post I mentioned yesterday will have to wait one more day thanks to this breaking news--today we had winter storm #3 in Lawrence, and it turned out to be the biggest blizzard I can remember! Once again I kind of doubted we would actually have the crazy storm the weather people were predicting, and I was especially skeptical when I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to absolutely no snow on the ground. I went back to bed for a couple of hours, and when I awoke again the snow had started. Within an hour or so it was coming down hard and the wind was howling, and it didn't stop snowing until more than 12 hours later. I kept shooting little video clips of the snow coming down because it looked like it couldn't come down any harder, but then an hour or so later I'd look outside and it would be coming down even harder! Needless to say I shot a lot of videos today. I think we must have gotten 6-8 inches, but it was hard to tell with all the drifting!

Thankfully the entire city pretty much shut down, and Chad was able to work from home instead of driving to Topeka. Even though the wind chill was way below zero and the snow was not stopping, my ambitious husband went out and tried to shovel a couple of times to stay ahead of the task, but the effort was pretty futile. After weathering the elements for a while, he decided that he wanted to take the storm head-on and drive to Kwik Shop to get a fountain soda. I expressed my concerns that this was a horrible idea, but I gave in and agreed to go on the adventure with him as long as I could get my new favorite treat--Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt--which is right across from Kwik Shop.

Once we got down the driveway and onto the street we realized this adventure might take a while. The snow was deep and blowing hard, and even our 4 wheel drive Escape had a difficult time with traction. It was slow going, but we eventually made it to Kwik Shop without getting stuck, but we decided to scrap our additional Orange Leaf and possible Hy-Vee plans, since visibility was so bad we couldn't even see Orange Leaf across the street!

After our blizzard adventure was over I decided to put all my little video clips together so that I could share the experience with everyone. I probably had about 10 total minutes of video, which I edited down to about 7 minutes. My husband (the broadcast journalism major) informed me that it was entirely too long and needed lots more editing, so the final cut is less than three minutes long--which is certainly luckier for all of you. Of course, if you live in the Midwest, you're probably having your own blizzard experience and don't need to watch ours!

If you enjoyed the music, please check out decker. The song is from Chad's cousin Brandon's latest CD, which is fantastic!

Return of the Jedi

2011-01-31T10:42:00.000-06:00

I realize the whole Star Wars trilogy is getting a little old and losing its humor, but I feel compelled to finish what I've started. Plus, this lame post will give me a an extra day to work on an "important" story from our weekend. There are at least a couple of moments in the short clip that made me chuckle, so I hope you find it at least a little bit humorous.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

I really thought the highlights were a) Darth Vader's reaction to getting his arm chopped off, b) Hans Chad's flailing arms when running away from the impending explosion, and c) Darth Dad's hair at the very end. Sweet.

The Empire Strikes Back

2011-01-26T22:21:00.000-06:00

When Eric and I started working on the second Star Wars movie we immediately had a casting dilemma with Lando Calrissian. After searching through tons of pictures on my computer we finally selected Eric's friend Bob, whom I had met and photographed on Eric's 40th birthday. We thought Bob would be perfect for the part...because in the picture I had of him he was facing the camera head on. Our standards are pretty specific in the world of Jib Jab casting.

Even with what looked to be the perfect head shot I had to re-edit his face like 5 times before getting the size and centering just right. The first few times we "shot" the scene his mustache was on his left cheek and his hairline was right at his eyebrows. It was certainly funnier that way, but since I'm quite the perfectionist I decided to go back and try again. I hope you enjoy the final product!

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Family Visit and Football

2011-01-25T09:54:00.000-06:00

I've been a big blogging slacker the last few days since I've been enjoying lots of time with my visiting brother and mother. It's been great having Eric here, and I'm glad Mom was able to come stay with us so that she could have more quality time with him too. We've done lots of lounging and relaxing, along with watching a few movies and important sporting events. While the KU game didn't go as we had hoped (boo, Texas!!), the AFC Championship game had a much better outcome (yea, Steelers!)!!

While Mom, Eric and I watched the Steelers game downstairs, my obsessed and superstitious husband watched it up in our bedroom. Since he had watched the last Steelers win by himself on that TV, he decided it would be good luck to do so again. Seriously. Although the rest of us thought his decision was slightly goofy, we did kind of appreciate it since it made our viewing of the game lots more relaxing and enjoyable. As most of our friends know, Chad gets a wee bit intense and emotional when his Steelers are playing. Since he kept his stress and excitement contained upstairs, we enjoyed watching the win calmly and peacefully in the basement.

Thanks to the quiet and stress-free environment, Eric and I were even able to cast and complete the second installment in the Star Wars trilogy during the commercials! Stay tuned for our next exciting and entertaining adventure!

Snow, Beautiful Snow

2011-01-20T22:51:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we had our second snowstorm of the year, and I think I was one of the few people in Lawrence who was actually excited about it! It started snowing around noon yesterday and snowed continually until early this morning, which means that we had about 7 new inches on the ground when we woke up this morning. The snow from our first storm hadn't all melted yet, so there was probably more like 8 or 9 inches in our yard.

Our second big snow reminded me that I hadn't shared the pictures from our first big snow, which I finally started editing last night. Then in a shocking turn of events, I couldn't resist going out to take more pictures today. I know you're probably thinking that if you've seen one snow you've seen them all, but today when the sun came out with all that new snow on the ground, it just looked so totally different than last week! The snow was smooth and sparkly and just gorgeous! It actually turned out to be a nice afternoon too--sunshine and 30 degrees made for a nice walk with the pups!

Hope you enjoy just a few of the pictures from last week and earlier today!

A New Hope

2011-01-18T10:54:00.000-06:00

Just in case you've never seen Star Wars, today I'm providing a wonderful synopsis done by some incredibly talented actors, just because it's Tuesday.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Good stuff, if I do say so myself. I particularly enjoyed my husbands sideburns. I briefly toyed with the idea of casting him as Luke since people used to think he looked like young Skywalker as a kid, but since I was Princess Leia, that might be slightly awkward later on down the road. Of course it might be slightly awkward with my brother as Luke too, but whatever--at least that's true to the story! Also, I must say that I had a difficult time casting the role of Obi-Wan. I had originally chosen my dad, but then realized that if there were to be a sequel, my dad would need to be Darth Vader. So I ended up selecting my friend Nate, because a) he's a big fan of the genre, and b) I had tons of pictures of him to use after making a slideshow for his 40th birthday a few months ago. I knew there was a reason I still had those pics on my computer!

Hope you enjoyed the performance! There may be a sequel in the works, so stay tuned!

White Elephant 2010

2011-01-16T13:43:00.000-06:00

One of our friends from our small group reminded me last week that I hadn't shared any pics from our annual white elephant gift exchange this year. Our group's Christmas party is such a wonderful tradition that I love going to and I love blogging about, which is obvious since I've blogged about it for the last 4 years in a row. Although I'm obviously a little late this year, I didn't want to break my white elephant blogging streak!

Our friends Pat and Kristin hosted the party this year, and as usual, we had a ridiculous amount of yummy food. After we all stuffed ourselves while socializing (or maybe I'm the only one who stuffed myself) we got to the main event of the evening, which was of course the gift exchange. Brian and LaRisa were attending their very first small group Christmas this year, so we had explained to them earlier in the week that they were to give some item from their house that they wanted to get rid of. We strongly encourage the gifting of crap at this particular party.

Although Charlie and Danny were attending their second Christmas party this year, we should have reminded them of our gift exchange rules as well, since for the second year in a row, Danny has given the most ridiculously awesome item that everyone starts stealing immediately. Last year it was the paintball gun; this year he gave an electronic drum set (which I totally wanted) with a pair of nunch ucks with a pair of tickets to a KU basketball game! Apparently they had received the tickets as a gift but couldn't go, so they just stuck them with this already awesome gift that was supposed to suck!

Brian opened the super gift first, and you can see how excited he was--and that's before he knew the box contained basketball tickets as well! The very next person stole it from him, and then lucky for him, his wife LaRisa stole it for the final allowed steal! I haven't asked if they've actually used the drums, but I know they were thrilled to go to the KU game!

Probably the next coolest gift was this really nice serving set with a pitcher and four glasses. Clearly I was surprised to get something so nice in this gift exchange, and obviously LaRisa and Cara think it's pretty neat too! Unfortunately Kristin stole the set immediately, but I'm guessing she'll let me borrow it sometime if I need to.

There were some other pretty awesome gifts, but in a while elephant awesome sort of way and not in an awesome awesome sort of way. For example, we had this lovely pink rose pillow that Cara so craftily made from an old prom dress. Of course it was perfect for Chad, since everyone knows if there are five words that fit my husband, they are lovely, pink, rose, prom and dress. Ha--that's just a little joke. :)

We also had this incredibly hideous Tiffany & Co. lamp. Um, yeah. That's a light up mermaid. Pretty awesome. Beth and James actually received that as a serious gift at some point!

There were obviously tons of other great gifts too, but they weren't all instant classics like these! As always, we had lots of laughs and tons of fun with these wonderful friends at Christmas.

Yikes

2011-01-12T09:43:00.000-06:00

This morning I'm getting ready to head to Topeka for a day with my mom, but before I jumped in the shower I was thinking about bundling up and taking the dogs for a quick walk since they didn't get one yesterday. I hadn't heard the wind today so I thought maybe it was a little nicer outside. I pulled up weather.com and saw this:

Ummm, no. Sorry pups, but I will not be taking you out today. A trip to the backyard will have to suffice.

Speaking of winter, did anyone notice the new header I made yesterday morning? All the snow around here reminded me that it was time to change my seasonal blog colors! Let me know what you think!

Perfect Snow

2011-01-11T07:11:00.002-06:00

Yesterday was the first snow day of the season here in Lawrence, and even though I was completely sick of the snow by the end of last winter, I was so happy to see it again this year! It was so beautiful here yesterday--the perfect winter day, in my opinion. There was no wind, the temp was right around freezing, and the snow was falling gently all day long. I couldn't resist taking a bunch of pictures of course, but I haven't had the chance to upload them quite yet.

In addition to the quick photo session I also shot a little video, just to capture the falling action of the beautiful flakes. Since Celtic loves the snow he came along, as did Fresco, who was also excited for the first snowfall of the season. Celtic would stay out in the snow for hours if you'd let him--it's like he's energized and invigorated by the cold. We used to joke about him wanting to grow up to be a sled dog when he was little, and even today he acts like a 5 year old again in the snow. I'm guessing now the cold and snow is kind of like an icepack for his entire arthritic little body. Check out the speed on our adorable little 13-year-old!

Notice who's missing? Hope was invited to come outside as well, but politely declined since she despises cold weather. In fact, when we took a quick walk with all of them later in the afternoon, Hope was so anxious to get inside she was outpacing her brothers by a long shot. Normally she's our best leash walker who stays right beside us, but yesterday she was pulling like she hadn't pulled in years. By the time we neared the house I was having to jog to keep up with her, so about three houses away I just let go of her leash (something we never do with our scent hounds) and watched her sprint for the front door. I half expected her to peel off to the first house she passed just to get back indoors, but thankfully she wasn't so frozen that she forgot where she lived. I knew I should have made her wear her coat.

I can already tell today won't be nearly as lovely, since the wind howled most of the night and is still doing so. I'm extra glad yesterday was beautiful since I'm guessing today will be quite miserable!

Crazy, Insane? Insane, Crazy?

2011-01-09T23:00:00.001-06:00

I mentioned back on my first day of being unemployed that I was starting the Insanity workout series, which has been kicking my tail 6 days a week ever since. Can I just say that this workout series truly lives up to its name? I can't even describe how intense it is. Since I've done the P90X workout series (which is 90 days long) a couple of times in the last couple of years I thought I was accustomed to insane workouts. Insanity is just insane on a whole different level and in a whole different way.

I liked P90X, but it's mostly weightlifting, with just a couple of days during the week that were cardiovascular workouts. Although it made me super sore at first, there were only a couple of workouts each week in which I worked up serious sweat. When my 90 day regimen was complete, I was way stronger, but I hadn't really trimmed down at all. In fact, my arms had gotten even bigger with the added muscle! Although I used to lift weights on our Crossbow almost exclusively for my workouts, I think as my metabolism has slowed down with age, weightlifting just doesn't give me the results I want anymore. I crave cardio these days, which is why the Insanity series was right up my alley. Almost every day was so grueling and exhausting that I was drenched after finishing my 40-60 minute workout. For anyone who's done P90X, remember when Tony says the Plyometrics DVD is the "mother of all workouts"? Insanity is similar to that, except that it's every day instead of once a week!

The awesome thing about Insanity is that even though it's a massive cardio workout, there's also a ton of strength training (push-ups, lunges, etc.) so you feel like you're getting the best of both worlds. I like the idea that I'm burning calories and gaining muscle at the same time! It's a great challenge for both guys and girls, which both my brother and my husband can attest to!

One of the other cool things about Insanity is the "fit test" that you do every two weeks to track your progress. It takes about 25 minutes and is a series of 8 exercises that you do for a minute each to see how many you can do during that time. You can see your improvement in writing every 14 days, which is very encouraging. Here are my results over the course of the 9 week program, from day 1 to today, day 63:

You can see that my improvement, especially on the exercises that I really stunk at in the beginning, was pretty insane! I'm an average of 77% more fit and strong than when I started! :)

So here's the bad news. For me, this increase in fitness didn't actually equate to much of a change in body shape. It's like God gave me a certain sized body, and no matter what I do, that body stays pretty much the same. Of course, it might also be that during the last few weeks especially, I was working out so hard I was kind of famished all the time, so I probably consumed more calories than normal! Really, all I would have liked was for my jeans to fit a little looser--for my thighs and booty not to take up so much room! While I can certainly tell my legs aren't quite as jiggly (sorry for that disgusting image burned into your mind), their size was virtually unchanged. I took "before and after" pictures, and while I did see a little more definition in my abs in the after picture, the change in my out of proportion thighs was downright negligible. What a bummer!

With that said, I really do like the Insanity workout and totally plan on doing the 60 day series again soon!

Putting Away A Plethora

2011-01-04T23:30:00.000-06:00

My big project of the day was taking down and putting away all the Christmas decorations. I know it's January 4th and I realize I'm probably the last person in the city who hasn't done this already, but when I was a kid our tradition was to always leave the tree and decorations up until after the New Year, so I'm kind of in that habit. Quite honestly, even if it hadn't been a childhood tradition, I would probably still leave them up this long. I just think the lights and the tree are so pretty. I'd probably leave them up a few weeks longer if next Monday wasn't the last day that the city will pick up trees for recycling.

This is going to sound really dorky, but I think part of why I like leaving the decorations out so long is that they're kind of like old friends that bring back lots of memories. Since you only get to see them once a year, you want to spend as much time with them as you can before they have to leave again. Cheesy, I know.

Today while I was getting ready to put things away, I first gathered the items from every room in the house and put them all onto the dining room table. I was thinking that having everything in one place would help me stay more organized as I put stuff back in their boxes, and I think the plan worked somewhat, but it also looked quite disastrous for a while first. I thought since I didn't take any pictures of the decorations while they were up this year, maybe I would bust out the camera and take a few pictures while they were coming down. This was the table loaded with all the decor, minus a few Christmas linens that were in the wash.

I like how Hope is standing there in a position that makes it look like she's wearing a Christmas bandana. Notice that the tree was still decorated at this point--the table didn't include any ornaments.

I realized at this point that 90% of the decorations around our house are not items that we actually purchased ourselves--they're almost all gifts. I think that's why they bring back so many memories and emotions, all relating to who gave them to us. Even if they're things we wouldn't have purchased for ourselves, they make us think of the family members or friends or former students (from my preschool teaching days) who gave them to us.

These two angels (you can barely see the back one) were presents from our friend Ted's parents the first two Christmases we were married.

I think those tall angels were gifts from one of my parents. The angel candle holders were from my dad. The brown angels behind the tall ones were from Chad's mom Joan. I think the stuffed Santa (whose beard you can see at the bottom) was from Chad's parents early in our marriage. His beard needs to be sewn back on because Hope chewed it off several years ago.

This nativity set is brand new. My dad just sent it to me for Christmas this year.

I'm thinking this nativity set came from my mom, and I think the Santa stacking dolls on the right were from her as well. Oh, and the plate with the snowmen was from her too--that was a present she got me one year after I'd admired it in the Hallmark store while we were out Christmas shopping together.

I think this is one of the few things on the table I actually purchased. I love these adorable little snowmen!!

These three little carolers made from clay were hand sculpted and painted by my brother's old girlfriend Cynthia. The little box of potpourri on the left was from one of my little preschoolers named Connor.

This cute little KU Christmas tree was either from my mom or Chad's parents--I can't remember.

The medium Santa behind that candle was a gift from one of my preschool students--a little girl named Maggie. The tall Santa is brand new too--I "won" that in the white elephant gift exchange at our small group Christmas party this year and I really like it!

I think maybe I bought the striped candles myself at some point, but the plates and bowls were a Christmas present from my dear husband, who surprised me with them one year when I was admiring them in Target. I love that print and wish I would have gone back and bought more!

This is definitely my most nostalgic of decorations. My mom made this when I was just a toddler, and it was displayed every Christmas in our house when I was a kid. I loved getting this rather hideous Santa out of the box every year and placing all of the little hand-wrapped packages around him and in his little burlap sack. I still do. I think I might need to replace that snow one of these days though!

There are so many others that have stories of their own, but I'll spare you any more pictures since this post is entirely too long already. Farewell to my little Christmas friends--see you all again in about 11 months!

Washington National Cathedral

2011-01-03T21:50:00.000-06:00

The other day while I was going through all of my pictures from the year, I realized that I hadn't ever talked about my visit to the Washington National Cathedral or shared the plethora of pictures I took there. I've worked on this post three separate occasions so I'd say it's about time I finished it!

When Dad and I finished walking our 60 miles we stayed at a hotel for the night in DC, and the next morning we decided to do a little sight-seeing before making the drive back to Ohio. Dad had just recently taken a vacation to the nation's capital, so we decided to take in one of the attractions that he and his wife Mim had missed while they were there--the Washington National Cathedral.

Seriously, if I had to sum this place up in three words, they would be Oh.My.Goodness. This place was absolutely phenomenal--I can't even begin to describe it. The architecture of the building was absolutely amazing and the history of the building was absolutely astounding. The planning of this place actually began in the late 1800s, and after several architectural drawings and re-drawings, the first stone was laid in 1907. The first chapel in the building was finished in 1912, but construction continued until the largest towers were finished in 1990. It is such a massive, complex, intricate building, the final dedication wasn't until just 20 years ago. In case you're poor at math, that means it took 83 years to complete it!!

There is so much history behind this place and so many fascinating facts about it. The funerals of many former presidents and were held there, along with memorial services and national days of prayer. President Woodrow Wilson is actually entombed within the structure, as are many other famous Americans, such as Helen Keller and her tutor Anne Sullivan. There is a particular stained glass window which actually includes a piece of the moon, which was presented to the cathedral at a service by the astronauts who collected it. The moon, people. It has a piece of the moon! The building is one of the highest points in Washington and the tallest part of the building is just over 300 feet tall. You can't imagine how massive it is!

Dad and I went on a guided tour of the main floor with a bunch of junior high kids, which turned out to be fine since they were well-behaved and the guide was super knowledgeable. We then checked out the lower level chapels on our own, browsed through the gift shop, found fellow Salinans we knew in the Kansas guestbook (who'd just been there a few days before!), and went up to the observation gallery in one of the towers. The views up there were spectacular and we also learned tons about the architecture and planning from the very informative displays. There are just so many cool things to see in this place, but I know my descriptions probably won't make it sound very interesting! My pictures won't do the place justice either, primarily because I didn't take my good camera to DC! Had I known we'd be going to such an amazing place for photography, I would have carried my DSLR all 60 miles just to have it at the National Cathedral!

Although the pictures aren't very good, I hope they give you an idea of how incredible this place was. I definitely plan on going back some day and hope everyone else takes the opportunity to do so the next time you're in DC!

2010 In Pictures

2011-01-02T22:34:00.000-06:00

Over the weekend I spent several hours going through all the photo folders on two different computers trying to organize all my pictures from 2010. It was a little daunting only because we got a new computer half way through the year, but everything has now been transferred, consolidated and labeled, so I was able to put together a year end slideshow like I did for 2009. I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve and has a more wonderful 2011!!

Baby Kate

2010-12-30T23:48:00.002-06:00

During the last couple of days when I wasn't enjoying the company of our lovely houseguests Jake and Amber, I was busy editing the pictures from my first newborn photo session from earlier in the week. My friend Megan and her husband Chad had a beautiful baby girl a few days before Christmas, and since they hadn't scheduled any professional pictures of dear little Kate, I asked if I could come over and practice photographing their first born. Megan was kind enough to allow me to use her beautiful daughter as a guinea pig, since the few things I knew about infant sessions were from websites and not from actual experience!

Let me first just say that I have a whole new appreciation for the amazing talent of my friend Kelly--as if I didn't already idolize her photography skills. I mean just look at these pictures of newborns she's done. They're phenomenal, and I have no idea how she makes it look so easy. After looking back at her pictures, I don't necessarily feel great about my own, but hopefully my so-so pictures for Megan and Chad will still give them a little joy and give me a few shots for my practice portfolio!

The session didn't exactly go as I'd imagined, I guess because I thought Kate would be a lot more sleepy and posable than she actually was. She didn't really have an interest in being placed into strange and unusual places or positions, so we weren't able to be as creative as I'd hoped. Much of the time she literally had one eye open and on me, like she was very suspicious of what I was doing and why. It was too funny. She was so adorable and so alert and aware for only being 8 days old! It took a little more time and patience than I imagined, but we eventually got a few decent shots, although not in all of the outfits and poses we'd hoped for!

Before I share the full group of pictures from the session, I just have to share one small set that I just loved so much I turned them into an animated image. It's not so much that these were such terrific pictures of Kate, but I just loved the way she went from being clearly frustrated and uncomfortable to calm and peaceful in just seconds from the soothing touch and voice of her Momma. Megan is such a super mom already!

The full slideshow is probably entirely too long, I know, but I just have such a hard time deleting pictures after a session. I got this one down to about 65 pictures or so, which is pretty good considering I took over 200 pics and then edited those down to just over 100, including some copies with special Photoshop finishes that didn't make it into the slideshow. Many of those that did make it aren't really keepers, but I just thought some of the goofy and sad faces are just too precious not to share. She is an adorable little baby, although I'm sure my pictures don't really do her justice!

Picture Project

2010-12-27T23:23:00.000-06:00

I mentioned earlier this month that I had an idea for a Christmas present for Chad's folks using the pictures I took of their farm back in September. With tons of help from my dear husband, I finally finished the project on Christmas Eve, just in time for us to take it to Salina on Christmas morning. Here's a shot of the finished project, which we hung on our wall briefly just to make sure the hanging apparatus functioned properly.

I'd originally planned on trying a fabric border around the edges, but after painting the wood base and mounting the pictures I thought it looked fine without one. I think it turned out okay for my first attempt at executing my idea, although next time I think I'll test out some slightly different materials. The pictures didn't have the textured look I was going for because the Mod Podge I originally tried didn't work with the texture of the chipboard that I wrapped the pictures around. Next time I'd like to try plywood instead of chipboard to see if that makes a difference. Speaking of wrapping the pictures, here are a few more pics so you can see the detail of my little pretend mini canvases.

I think it turned out kind of cool, and thankfully, I think my in-laws liked it too!

A Griswold Christmas

2010-12-26T23:50:00.001-06:00

The other night while we were out running the last of our holiday errands I asked Chad to drive us to view some crazy Christmas lights I'd seen on Youtube the day before. There were actually two different displays I wanted to go see and the first one was right near where we were, so my husband reluctantly agreed to make the detour. I loved the tradition of driving around to view Christmas lights as a child, so I was slightly more excited about the viewing than Chad was.

While I fully expected the display to be slightly cheesy and over-the-top based on what I saw on Youtube, I did not expect to actually enjoy it as much as I did! The music (on its own frequency of the radio) was pretty fun and the way it was programmed to the lights was pretty amazing. We stayed for about three different songs (much to Chad's chagrin) and I got a little video of one of them.

After leaving that house (which, by the way, has its own website called Light Up Lawrence), I kind of wanted to go to the other house just to see if it was any better. I'd only seen a tiny bit of this video of the display, and it looked like it had potential to be entertaining as well. We drove to the next neighborhood and the traffic was absolutely insane, with a line of about 5 cars waiting to get in front of the house for viewing. We waited for just a couple of minutes to see if the line was moving, but even from down the street we could see enough to know it wasn't worth waiting. While you could tell the programming was done in the same way and at least one of the songs was even the same, the lights were just so tacky. There was a huge light tree and just so much crap going every which way--it wasn't neat and orderly like the other house had been. It was just kind of a debacle, in my opinion!

Speaking of Christmas cheesiness, today I was singing the Christmas Cookies and Holiday Hearts song again, and I realized I should have looked for it on Youtube the other day so my post quoting the lyrics would have make more sense. So without further adieu and because I know you all were wondering, here's the aforementioned song, complete with the cover of the album (not the muppets, by the way) that I think we still possess somewhere in our basement!

Christmas Greetings 2010

2010-12-24T12:22:00.000-06:00

For all those people who don't normally read my blog, who have been directed here via email, welcome to the official Luce Family Christmas Letter online! I hope you will enjoy this enhanced version of our Christmas letter and homemade Christmas card.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warmest Christmas greetings, dear friends and family!

It's late in the afternoon on December 16, and I'm trying to get some inspiration for our Christmas letter by listening to Christmas music while sitting in front of the Christmas tree. I've had such a hard time getting started on our letter this year and I don't really know why! I think I always have a difficult time moving from Thanksgiving into Christmas because I'm so annoyed by Christmas items in the stores starting in October. I have managed to finish 99% of our Christmas shopping, so at least there's one thing I haven't procrastinated like this letter!

The biggest (maybe only) news in our life, although this isn't very chronological, is that I quit my job at KU Endowment last month! I'd been considering it for quite some time, and finally there were more reasons for leaving than for staying, so I resigned just a week after my 12-year anniversary. I am adjusting to being the primary housekeeper, cook, errand runner and dog walker in our home, and Chad is enjoying our more relaxing evenings and weekends as a result! I'm looking forward to having more time for hobbies (photography, blog writing, and other crafty stuff), volunteering at a local food pantry, and spending more time with my Mom in Topeka. While we're obviously tightening our purse strings a bit, we're very thankful for the opportunity and for the improved quality of life!

Chad is in his 7th year at Westar and spends quite a bit of his time traveling to meetings all over the eastern half of the state. Thankfully, he rarely has to spend the night and still has plenty of vacation time he can use for golfing, which is his primary hobby these days. He's also become quite the civic leader (not always by his own choice), serving on the Lawrence Sustainability Advisory Board and the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, to which he was just elected. Although he stays very busy, he somehow found the time to play on two softball teams all spring and summer and to go deer hunting earlier this month.

We also found a little time to travel this year, with the highlight being a trip to Los Angeles to surprise my brother on his 40^th birthday. He's had a good year that included a commercial with Jerome Bettis, a small part on an episode of an NBC sitcom, and the release of a self-written web series called The Beta Test. Chad's brother also turned 40 this year, but thankfully we didn't have to travel across the country for his party!

In November we made a fun and fast trip to Nebraska to see our good friends Jake and Amber and to watch KU's last football game in Lincoln. We also took several trips back to Salina (which can hardly count as travel), the best ones being the trips for a Roger Daltrey concert and our 20th high school reunion in June. Sadly, one of our trips was for the funeral of Grandma Decker, who passed away in September at age 88. We were so saddened by her passing, but are so thankful that she is now running around with Jesus in heaven!

I also made a trip without Chad this year when I traveled to Washington, DC with my dad to walk in my fifth 60 mile, 3-Day walk to support Susan G. Komen for the Cure. There were lots of cool things to see in DC and it was a great city for the 3-Day walk, although next year I plan on participating somewhere else in the country. I was very proud of (though not surprised by) my father's commitment to raise money, train and then complete the 60 miles less than a month before his 70th birthday.

Speaking of birthdays, our oldest dog Celtic turned 13 years old this summer, and although he's gotten a little arthritic, he is still walking a half mile each day and even still sprints when he's super excited! Hope turned 10ish and stayed cancer-free this year (knock on wood), although she somehow went almost completely deaf in a matter of just a few months! Her deafness definitely adds a new dimension to her weirdness. Our little big man Fresco is as affectionate and loving as ever, and we are thankful that he is only 4 and will hopefully have many, many more years with us! We can't imagine our lives without our pups!

We are so very thankful for all we were blessed with in 2010 and hope it was a wonderful year for your family as well. We pray that your homes will be filled with immeasurable love, peace and hope this holiday season, and that you might know the true joy of Christmas—the miraculous birth of the Savior!!

Much love,
Kim (and Chad too!)

Christmas Cookies and Holiday Hearts...

2010-12-21T23:35:00.000-06:00

"...that's the way the holiday starts!"

Does anyone besides me remember that song? Maybe from the John Denver and the Muppets Christmas album? Or maybe it was a different kids Christmas album? Anyone? Bueller?

Anyway, that song is about making cookies and treats for the holidays, which is actually what I've been doing in my free time the last few days. Check out all the goodies I've made in the last couple of days that I finally finished up tonight!

Peppermint Almond Bark, Chocolate Dipped Pretzels, and Chocolate Chip/Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Peanut Butter Bon Bons and Chocolate Dipped Peppermints
(I had some chocolate left over and had to dip something!)

??????????

That last mystery "treat" is the remains of the two bon bons that fell apart in the chocolate while I was trying to dip them. I spread the chocolate with bon bon chunks onto wax paper, and then broke it up into "chocolate peanut butter bark" once it hardened. I'm hoping it will be tasty even though I know it looks like p**p smeared on waxed paper in this picture. You're welcome for planting that disgusting thought into your head if it wasn't already there. :)

"Goody goody yum yum yum!" Those are more lyrics to the aforementioned song in case you were wondering. You're welcome for getting that song stuck in your head if it's one you also know from your childhood.

On the agenda tomorrow: putting all this stuff on plates to take to friends and neighbors so that it won't be sitting around the house for me to eat!

Christmas Photo Adventure

2010-12-15T20:30:00.001-06:00

Although I have yet to actually start making our Christmas cards, over the weekend we did actually manage to get our family Christmas photo taken. Let me just say that this was a bit of an adventure. A couple of times in the past we've had a friend come over to push the shutter release button for us because it's so hard to get the dogs to look at the camera when there's no one behind it. I think in the future we'll have to plan ahead a little more and hire someone to come over and help us, because Sunday's photo shoot was a bit of a disaster--albeit a hysterical one.

With the help of a remote and a tripod, I took 101 total pictures, starting with a few just of Chad where I was trying to get the exposure right using just the light from our window. Once we got the dogs (sort of) placed I just started holding down the remote button, instructing Chad to just keep smiling and hoping that eventually all of the dogs would at some point look at the camera. Although I never actually captured them looking at the exact same time, there were a few decent pics of each of them in the batch, so I was able to use Photoshop to edit together different dog heads/bodies/eyeballs to fabricate one coherent and acceptable picture. This is the final product with sort of an "antiqued" finish.

Overall I'm fairly happy with what I came up with, and I appreciate the end result even more because of what we went through to get it. It's pretty darn hysterical. Enjoy!!

Ahhhahhhh, Kansas!!

2010-12-12T22:47:00.000-06:00

Does anyone else besides Chad and I remember those promotional ads for Kansas that were on the radio when we were kids back in the 80s? They are so ingrained in our brains. Whenever we think about what a terrible place Kansas is to visit we think of those ads, which I'm pretty sure is the opposite of the effect the ads were supposed to have. Regardless, that's where the title of this post came from. If you have no idea what I'm talking about or would like to hear one of those ads just for the sake of nostalgia, you can check one out here--although that's a total digression and not the original purpose of this post!

When I mentioned in my Friday blog entry that the weather was unseasonably warm and beautiful, I knew it was supposed to turn cold over the weekend. I did not, however, realize the severity of the swing in temperature and wind speed. Overnight on Friday, we started hearing the wind howl and also heard some precipitation at some point. We awoke to ice on the deck and wind chills of about 15 below. It was miserable out, and the weather got worse as the day went on. It started lightly snowing late in the afternoon and was blowing so hard it was hard to keep your car on the road. While it was painful to be outside in the cold, it was actually kind of beautiful to watch the snow blowing on the road--it looked like liquid flowing over the asphalt. I'd hoped to get some video of it, but when I went outside after we got home Saturday night, it was too dark to even see the road. You can sort of see the phenomenon in this video from the Journal-World though--it was kind of fascinating.

Although I couldn't get my own video of the blowing snow late last night, while I stood there on our porch freezing to death waiting for a car to drive by to light up the street, I did get a video that clearly displays the ferocious wind. Since you can see the blowing snow as well, you can probably imagine how miserable it was out there!

Ahhahh, Kansas! Gotta love it!

Jekyll & Hyde Bush

2010-12-10T23:04:00.000-06:00

Today the weather in Lawrence was unseasonably beautiful—so much so that Chad took the day off work to play just one more round of golf for the year. I didn't spend as much time outside as he did, but I did take Fresco for an additional longer walk after dropping off his older siblings. It was so gorgeous out I ended up finishing our walk in a short sleeve shirt!

The weather today made me think of gardening, which is something I'm looking forward to doing more of when springtime rolls around. We have a big garden in the front of our house that appears to have been landscaped professionally, but the problem is that I really don't like many of the things that are planted there. There are all sorts of bushes and shrubs, as well as a huge evergreen tree, and I'm definitely more of a flower person. Last spring I was able to replace a couple of small shrubs with a couple of daylilies (my favorites) and other perennials, but it will still take a ton of work to replace all the stuff planted there that I don't like.

First on the list of things to replace is this bush.

Does anyone else think this thing is as hideous as I do? I have no idea what it is, but it looks like a huge weed to me. In fact, it looks so much like a huge weed that I didn't even realize that there actually was a huge weed growing right smack in the middle of it all summer. Take a closer look.

It's like some scary, freaky, evil tomato plant with spiderweb looking leaves. It's branches were full of stickers and it was a big pain in the rear to pull out. I couldn't believe how huge it was—here's one more picture so you can see the size (and overall ugliness) of the thing relative to my foot.

I seriously think that's the largest and scariest weed I'd ever pulled.

So anyway, there are actually three of these ugly bushes in our garden that I need to get rid of, and here's the only drawback about doing so. Just as I was wondering why in the world someone would ever plant that thing in the first place, fall rolled around and the bush changed color, and for a couple of months it actually looked like this.

Is that color not gorgeous? It's so pretty I almost considered keeping the bush around, but its summer appearance is just too darn ugly. Hopefully it won't be too difficult to dig up in the spring!

Good Jayhawks and Bad Jayhawks

2010-12-07T23:44:00.000-06:00

Tonight we watched our awesome Jayhawks beat the Memphis Tigers in the Jimmy V. Classic, and although they were quite sloppy in the first half, it was a much better showing than our one point win over UCLA last Thursday. That one was slightly embarrassing, although a win is a win is a win and we're still undefeated.

Watching this game tonight made me think of the one and only game I've gotten to go to this year, which was thanks to my friend and former colleague Kevin, who provided me with tickets to the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi game so that Chad and I could take Eric to a game while he was here. We had SO much fun because the Jayhawks were absolutely astounding, but also because last year Eric wasn't home for basketball season and he hadn't been to a game since 2008 at least. It was a fantastic evening with my two best guys!

The great thing about the timing of Eric's visit last month was that he also got to go with us to a KU football game. Although our football team left a lot to be desired this year, it still was a fun day at the stadium with relatively good weather. In a surprise turn of events, we actually got to see a good first half of football too, which wasn't expected since we were playing the number 12 team in the nation--Oklahoma State. After scoring a couple of touchdowns in the first quarter and holding the Cowboys to just 20 points at halftime, our 'Hawks came unglued and completely derailed in the second half. We ended up getting slaughtered and leaving before the end of the game, but I was still glad Eric was able to see a tiny bit of good football and have the game day experience, even if it isn't the most spectacular of game day experiences! Maybe some day our program will get permanently turned around and it will be!

The Farm

2010-12-05T22:25:00.000-06:00

Back in September, when we were in Salina for the celebration of Grandma's life, I obviously spent a lot of time taking pictures of Chad's family. The pictures I forgot to share from that day were actually of the family farm--a beautiful 160 acres west of Salina where no farming is actually still done. This homestead was originally built by Chad's grandparents, but when Grandma Decker was widowed moved into town back in the late 80s, Chad and his family moved into the house and his parents have lived there ever since.

The farm is such a peaceful place and I love taking pictures of the landscapes whenever I get the chance. The day of Grandma's funeral, a big storm came rolling in late in the afternoon which made for some dramatic horizons. My pictures (especially resized for Picasa) don't really do the beauty of the place justice, but I was looking back at them this evening because I was thinking about using 6-8 of them for kind of an art project for Chad's parents for Christmas. I'm not sure if it will really turn out like I'm picturing it in my brain, but I'm going to attempt to make something interesting and attractive. The only reason I'm sharing that here is because Chad's parents don't have a computer and I'm 99.9% sure they won't ever read this!

Anyway, I put the pictures online so that I could compare them all and try to pick out the ones I want to use for my project. Let me know if there are any you absolutely love!

Infrequent But Funny

2010-12-03T23:59:00.000-06:00

Wow. So that whole idea of me having more time to blog once I quit my job? Um, yeah--not so much. I can't believe I've actually averaged fewer posts per week than I did while I working! Clearly, I suck.

It sounds kind of crazy, but I've actually just been keeping really busy. I didn't really anticipate how much time it would take to become of the CEO of the Luce household. I've become quite the domestic goddess, whipping up creative yet tasty dinners from leftovers or whatever is left in the pantry. Chad has been quite impressed and also thankful that he's no longer required to be entirely involved in household chores like laundry, vacuuming, errand running and dog walking. Our evenings are super relaxing and couldn't love my new position as housewife any more, but I really need to figure out a way to work in some more blogging and other creative outlets!

Anyway, hopefully soon I'll find some time to work on some posts which are actually about something in particular, but for now I just have to share a funny video that I think is a keeper. You might have seen this already since over 3 million people have viewed it on Youtube, but our friends Cara and Beth shared this with us just a few weeks ago, so I guess we were a little slow to the party. Since then, I think I've watched this and the "sequel" like 15 times, at least. It makes us laugh so darn hard! After sharing it with some friends last night we've been singing different lines from the song all day--in fact, Chad is singing right next to me as I type! Just so you know, there's a bit of foul language included in this "hastily made Cleveland tourism video," but hopefully you can see past that to the humor!

While I think the above video is pretty hysterical, the follow up "2nd attempt" video is even funnier, so you have to check that one out here. Seriously. It's so offensive in many ways, but so flipping funny! If you share our sense of humor, you'll be singing "buy a house for the price of a VCR" in no time!

Thankful for Family

2010-11-26T23:52:00.001-06:00

My brother and I had a great time together this last week and I'm so thankful he was here. We always have so much fun no matter what we're doing. We watched movies, did some shopping, visited my cousin, went to the KU football game, watched and went to KU basketball games, went out to eat, went to church and brunch with my mom and did lots of other stuff with my mom, did the Insanity workout together each day, walked the dogs, ate Thanksgiving dinner (after I spent the whole day cooking) and I'm sure did lots of other stuff that I'm forgetting. It was a fun and busy week! I'll share a few more pictures later, but first I wanted to share a few pictures from our amazing Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin Darren's house yesterday. This was the Turkey Day dinner to top all Turkey Day dinners!

My cousin Darren and his partner Oscar built this incredible house in Shawnee earlier this year and it was absolutely designed for entertaining, so they hosted 20 people at their house yesterday and the food was just phenomenal. Darren and his sister (also my cousin) Debbie are both amazing cooks (just like our Grandma was) and Deb's son Mike is a great cook as well. I can't even explain how much food was there and how fabulous it was!

We had a great time seeing my Aunt Lois and her husband Bill along with Deb and Darren and other family members, and it was also nice to get to know Oscar better. He's a great guy and it's just so nice to see my cousin so happy.

I had a great time taking tons of pictures of their gorgeous home and beautiful Christmas decorations that were already up. I also had lots of fun taking pictures of all five dogs in attendance, two of whom are Darren and Oscar's and three others belonging to my aunt and her sisters. How adorable are these guys?

Kobe

Ralphie

Lucky

Effie

Scrappy

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of great food and lots of quality time with family and lots of adorable canines!

OCC Gifts

2010-11-20T06:00:00.000-06:00

One of my projects earlier in the week was to finish shopping and wrapping and packing up our Operation Christmas Child box. I love this ministry so much and have so much fun participating every year!

Since I'm now without income we decided to fill only one shoebox for this Christmas, so Chad and I decided together that we'd shop for a 10-14 year old girl. We thought maybe the older kid boxes would be in higher demand since the older kids are a little more difficult to shop for--there isn't as much of a cute factor as there is shopping for the little ones. We headed to the dollar store and made the rounds picking out toiletries, candy, accessories, school supplies and a few toys. I couldn't find a sketchbook to go with the colored pencils we'd picked out, so I later picked one up at Half Price Books and thought I was all done shopping. When I went to box up our gifts on my first day off, I couldn't fit them in a small box so I ended up having to pick out a larger one, but then I had too much space left over and decided I needed to do more shopping!

So anyway, this week I wrapped my box and printed the shipping label and wrote a note to go inside to our child, but first I laid out all the presents to take a few pictures. I always think it's so fun to see how much stuff you can fit into the boxes--it's like a little clown car! Here are a few pics of all the stuff we got before I did my supplemental shopping.

Look how much empty space there is! I went back to the dollar store and picked out a jump rope, a princess watch, some bracelets, and some headbands. That filled the box up perfectly, so I dropped it off at our church and was all done!

Memorial Stadium in Lincoln

2010-11-17T23:18:00.000-06:00

Chad and I originally decided to go to Lincoln for the KU/Nebraska game when our friends Jake and Amber moved back to Nebraska over the summer, at which time we had no idea how good (or in this case, bad) KU would be in football. As the season progressed and it became obvious how inconsistent our Jayhawks were, we had a tinge of regret about spending a significant amount of money on the tickets. However, we thought that since it would be the last time KU would ever play Nebraska in Lincoln's Memorial Stadium (since Nebraska recently left the Big 12), and since we hadn't ever been to Lincoln, and since their stadium is supposed to be the football equivalent to Allen Fieldhouse, and since it was supposed to be a fantastic football experience, we were actually pretty excited about the game.

While we didn't actually have any hope of winning against #10 Nebraska, we were expecting that our 'Hawks would have a little momentum after their record-breaking comeback against Colorado the week before. Unfortunately, like most of the people in the stadium that week, we left at halftime. We had totally underestimated them against Colorado, so we were hoping that we were underestimating them against Nebraska as well. I kept telling Chad I would be happy if our guys were just able to score one touchdown.

Anyway, when we got to the stadium in Lincoln and found our seats, we quickly realized that we were not going to have the quintessential Nebraska football experience, since this was our view.

Uh, yeah. So we couldn't see all of the field, most of the Nebraska band, the majority of the other seats in the stadium, any of the 5 jumbo screens, or the sky. The only good thing was that because we were tucked away in a corner underneath the upper deck, we stayed incredibly warm on a super cold night. While our friends elsewhere in the stadium were freezing under blankets, we never even put on our gloves!

Clearly we didn't get to hear, see and feel the excitement of the game at Lincoln's Memorial Stadium, which was a bummer. The game was also a bummer, in that we didn't even score that one touchdown that I had hoped for--our offense was horrific. The one bright spot of the evening was our defense, which held those Cornhuskers to only 20 points all night. I thought that was super impressive--way to go defense!!

Product Testing Institute

2010-11-16T21:36:00.000-06:00

A couple of weeks ago we were watching football with some friends and we saw this phone commercial, which I absolutely love. It's so flipping funny! That made me think of the commercial below, which a coworker sent me a few months ago. It cracked me up so much I saved it, but then I totally forgot to share it! Chad didn't think it was quite as funny as I did, but I think it's a keeper. These little girls could not be more adorable!

Once you've watched those cuties you have to watch the other similar commercials for that particular Sony phone. They are seriously so hysterical. They have focus groups for Guidos, Models, Surfers, Glam Rockers, and Seniors. The Guidos and Models are probably the funniest, but the Models are so over the top I don't even think they're real. The Surfers are darn funny too though. When you need a break today you have to check them out!

Nebraska

2010-11-14T23:08:00.001-06:00

This weekend we made a quick getaway trip to our neighboring state of Nebraska, where we met our good friends Jake and Amber and visited the college town of Lincoln for the first time. While the primary purpose of the trip was seeing our favorite Nebraskans, we also went to see our Jayhawks play the Cornhuskers in football. The game left a little to be desired (more on that later), but we had a nice time with Amber and Jake and their good friends (and our friends too) Amy and Brian, who we met up with after the game.

After our friends left Lincoln this morning, the highlight of my day was actually taking pictures in the really cool Haymarket district of Lincoln and the UNL campus. While I didn't have the lens I wanted and the light was entirely too bright for good pictures, I still had fun and got a few good shots. I didn't take the time to edit many of them and I uploaded them in a small file size so the quality isn't great, but I still want to share a little of the beauty of Lincoln!

Kristin's Fall Show

2010-11-12T22:35:00.000-06:00

When I wrote about quitting my job a couple of weeks ago I mentioned wanting to use the creative side of my brain for a change. Although I didn't really do anything creative in my first week off, I did find some inspiration by spending a couple of afternoons with my friend Kristin. I've talked about my talented friend and her amazing jewelry many times in the last few years, but I have to blog about her once again because I never cease to be amazed by her fantastic creations. I've been helping her to get ready for her fall show (which is Saturday), and I can't even begin to explain how much incredible STUFF she will have at her show! Along with amazing bracelets, necklaces and earrings, Kristin also makes wool and wire flower pins (at right) and wool purses--all made from recycled wool sweaters. She also makes smaller wool flower hat pins and flower hair bands with interchangeable flowers! As if that isn't enough, she also has hand-painted mugs and embroidered wool pillows. Seriously, she absolutely amazes and inspires me!

I obviously love Kristin's designs and believe wholeheartedly in her talent, so I'm excited to do some online marketing for her now that I'm unemployed. My first project was making her a Facebook page today, which will hopefully eventually have lots of pictures of her jewelry and accessories. If the link doesn't work, you can log on to Facebook and search for "Something Beautiful by Kristin Campbell" to become a fan or like her! I've also set up a Facebook event for her show tomorrow if you're interested in going.

If you aren't on Facebook and would like to attend Kristin's show, here are the logistics.

Saturday, November 13 · 4:30pm - 8:00pm

Point B Dance Studio
3115 W 6th St Suite H (east of Sonic on 6th Street)
Lawrence

I hope everyone in the Lawrence area can make it. If not, I'll be helping Kristin with another show Friday in KC, so put it on your calendar! I promise you won't be disappointed!

Old 97's Video Blitz

2010-11-11T22:34:00.005-06:00

After about six upload attempts I finally got one of the the videos from this summer's 97's show on Youtube, so if you're interested you can watch their old song Doreen below. I love this one because it shows each of the guys rockin' out on their own instrument--they're all so good at what they do!

If you missed their stint on Leno last night, you can actually watch that as well (after sitting through a brief commercial) on NBC's website here. Their website also had a backstage interview with the guests of the evening, which includes a few words from Ken and Rhett starting at about 1:50. Rhett mentioned that this was actually the 4th time they've been on Leno's show, so apparently I'm not the only person out there who thinks they're pretty awesome!

As you can imagine, Chad was pretty excited to hear that their new song started as a Bob Dylan tune, since Dylan is his absolute favorite artist ever. Now Chad's on a mission to figure out which song it was that they rewrote. I'm sure he'll be going through his 100 Dylan CDs in the next few days and listening to every song--or maybe he'll just be able to find the answer on Google!

Seriously, don't you think I deserve some sort of compensation from Old 97's for all of the online marketing I'm doing for them? Maybe in the form of backstage passes for their upcoming show at The Bottleneck? ;)

My Favorite Foursome

2010-11-09T23:10:00.001-06:00

Back in July when we saw my favorite foursome from Dallas (aka Old 97's), I really intended to blog more extensively about the show, but instead only ended up sharing about my awesome encounter with Murry. So let me just sum up my review of the evening: the weather was perfect, we had great company (our friends Nate and Leigh Ann), and the 97's sounded fantastic. Although they didn't play two of my favorites (Niteclub and 4 Leaf Clover), they played with their standard over-the-top energy and were absolutely terrific. Although we weren't quite in the front row because we didn't pay for VIP tickets, we were just a few rows back at the front of the "regular person" section. As usual though, I didn't have my good camera, so getting good pictures of the band was nearly impossible in the dark with them always moving! I saved just one of the band and one of each of the 97's.

Ken

Rhett

Phillip

Murry

Old 97's

While my pictures pretty much suck, my camera does much better at video, and I have several great clips of entire songs that I'm going to try to get uploaded to my Youtube page tomorrow.

So this post might seem completely out of nowhere since the concert I'm talking about was so many months ago, but the reason I thought of it was that I was just looking at my calendar and noticed that I'd set myself a reminder to record Jay Leno on Wednesday, because my 97's are the musical guest! They'll be playing a song from their latest album, which I don't like nearly as much as their old stuff, but it will still be fun to see them!

Speaking of seeing them, I'm way more excited to see them in person, which will actually happen again in just a couple of months!! They are coming to Lawrence on January 28 and will be playing at the Bottleneck! I'm putting it on my calendar right now and think you should too!

Days Off, Day One

2010-11-08T20:51:00.003-06:00

Today was obviously my first day of not being gainfully employed, and thankfully I had a pretty productive day. I hate the idea of Chad working his tail off for the man while I contribute nothing to the family unit financially, so I darn well want to be sure I'm contributing in other ways! To make sure I got myself off to a good start on day one, I woke up with Chad at 6:30 and got busy soon after. I did four loads of laundry, dusted a couple of rooms, put away a bunch of stuff I'd brought home from my office, boxed up our gifts for Operation Christmas Child, figured out how to work the new digital picture frame my coworkers gave me for a going away present, boxed up some stuff for Goodwill, cleaned the kitchen, started the Insanity workout series, went to lunch with a former coworker, went to Half Price Books and bought my first Christmas present, went to the bank, talked to my friend Mindy about her upcoming first 3-Day, walked the dogs and got the mail, had my quiet time, poop scooped the yard, answered a bunch of emails, unloaded the dishwasher and actually cooked dinner. I probably won't be this productive every day, but I'd say my first day off was a successful one!

12 Years

2010-11-06T09:43:00.000-05:00

A 12-year chapter of my life officially came to a close yesterday, and I'm so very excited to start spending more time doing things I really enjoy! I expected to sleep wonderfully last night since a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. My poor hubby's congestion meant that he had a hard time breathing and therefore snored all night long. As I lay in bed listening to his snores my mind was still racing about work, which I guess is to be expected for a little while at least. The last couple of weeks were extremely busy and pretty frantic, as so many people came to me with projects they wanted me to complete before I left. For the most part I got everything done, but I still feel like there were so many loose ends that could have been tied up better, and since I'm such an anal retentive freak, I'm still worrying about it.

There's actually another thing that's eating at me as well. Hopefully if I get it off my chest now I will put it behind me and not feel the need to talk about it again. I mentioned this last night to some friends who were helping me celebrate my departure, and they thought it was weird too, so hopefully this isn't just me. Here's the thing: outside of my own division, there was only one senior staff member who even bothered to say goodbye. She happens to be the only woman senior VP, which I don't think is a coincidence. She called me earlier this week to specifically say how much she appreciated all the work I'd helped their department with and how much she enjoyed working with me, and I appreciated the gesture so much.

Strangely enough, my own senior VP (my boss's boss) didn't say a word to me until he sent an email on my last day thanking me and wishing me well. It was a very nice email, in which he said, "I greatly respect the expertise, hard work and unique precision you have brought to that position. You have taken it a long way from the days when providing reports for in-house staff was essentially a non-technical position, and forever changed how Information Systems will handle that function. You leave behind a tremendous legacy of reports, applications and processes that we will use for years to come." While I certainly appreciate his sentiments, it would have been nice if he'd shown me any sort of respect while I actually still worked there, but whatever.

I honestly expected that I would hear SOME sort of goodbye from our president and a couple of the other senior VPs, but no such luck. This is actually so typical of the leadership of that office, so I don't really know why I'm surprised. There is a "good old boys"culture that everyone has talked about there for years, and if you're not one of those important guys in the fund raising department, you really don't matter that much. Within the fund raising division, there are 6 VPs/assistant VPs under the senior VP, all of whom I'd worked with closely, and most of whom had worked there a shorter time than me. Despite the fact that all of their subordinates were extremely kind, appreciative and complimentary when they found out I was leaving, not one of the VPs/AVPs said a word upon my resignation. Not a word, despite the fact that I was in the midst of projects for a couple of them at the time!

Seriously, I think this is so disrespectful on so many levels. I don't care if I'd been a file clerk who'd never spoken to the organization president in her life, I think after 12 years at the same office, anyone deserves a "thanks for your years of service" email at the very least!

While I certainly don't regret all the years I worked there, all the things I learned there, all the benefits I was given there, and all the friends I made there, I am so thankful not to be there anymore!

First Photo Session

2010-11-01T12:48:00.002-05:00

Saturday afternoon I had the pleasure and honor of taking some family photos of my friends Pat and Kristin and their little baby boy Elijah. I was super excited about it but also a little nervous, because even though I've taken a million photos in the last few years, I had yet to take any pictures for anyone other than myself. Thankfully though, my subjects were beautiful, the weather was perfect, the setting was lovely, and the late afternoon lighting was great! Everything came together and my first photo session actually went pretty well!

I did a little editing of pictures Saturday night and then some more editing Sunday evening, and although I might still have a little more editing to do, I wanted to at least share the ones I'd picked out so far. I think they turned out pretty good! I put them into a slideshow using Windows Moviemaker, but I didn't have any tunes that seemed like a good match, so I ended up using a random sample song that was on the hard drive of my computer which is totally lame. I need some good ideas for slideshow music!

I had a great time on my first photo shoot and hope to take some more pictures for friends in the near future!!

Happy 1st!

2010-10-27T22:04:00.000-05:00

Our little friend Violet had a birthday party just a few days before I left for my trip to DC, and we had a lovely time celebrating with her family and friends on a beautiful fall day in a local park. Her parents, our good friends Robyn and Dan, provided tons of great food for everyone and we had a fun time watching Vi enjoy her first cake. She is such a happy, agreeable and easygoing baby--one of those babies that makes everyone to have them! We were a little bummed because we had to leave before all the presents were opened, but I got a couple of cute cake shots at least. I think this was my favorite!

Why I Quit My Job, Part 2

2010-10-24T22:18:00.001-05:00

So obviously there was a lot going on at work causing me a lot of dissatisfaction in my job. In addition to that, there was a lot going on in my personal life that was making me want to spend less time at work and more time doing other things. Here's a brief list of some of the non-work reasons I was ready to hit the high road.

1. I really want to feel like I am doing something meaningful and important with my life, and writing reports all day wasn't really cutting it. I didn't mind my job while I was spending 6 hours a week volunteering at the shelter, because that was my purpose, but since I was no longer involved with dog rescue I was feeling very unfulfilled personally.

2. I really want more time to volunteer! I've been volunteering two Saturdays a month at The Leo Center food pantry and I really like it, but I'd really like to have time to get more involved--there and with dog rescue! About a year ago I connected with a couple of local Lawrence women who had just started Lawrence based Crossroads Dog Rescue, and although I only got to take pictures for them one time, I'm so looking forward to helping them as much as possible!

3. I really feel like I need to use the other side of my brain for a while. I've been using the left analytical side of my brain for so many years, and that's definitely one of my strengths, but the creative side of my brain wants to get some exercise too. I want to have time to practice my photography, maybe learn some more web design, do some more writing on my blog, and practice my simplistic graphic design some more. I have some ideas for art projects floating around in my head that I really want to get to work on!

4. I really want to improve my physical and spiritual health through daily workouts and quiet times with God. It's never been possible for me to do both in the mornings without getting up at 5 a.m., which takes a toll on me because we don't usually get to bed until between 10 and 11 p.m. There are so many studies that have found 8 hours of sleep a night is important, so I really want to be consistent in my sleep and in my spiritual/physical workouts!

5. In addition to my back pain that's made worse by sitting, I have a couple of other ongoing health issues that have been taking a toll on my work life. A few years ago I developed "unexplained edema," which is just random swelling (mine is mostly in just one leg), and the doctors haven't been able to figure out what's causing it. It's uncomfortable and slightly painful and it makes sitting more difficult as well. Then this year I developed some upper gastrointestinal problems (esophageal spasms from a messed up stomach) that are definitely exacerbated by stress.

6. I really want to spend more time with my mom as she's dealing with her own health issues. As one of my coworkers pointed out when I told him I was leaving, I won't ever regret making some personal financial sacrifices to spend more time with my mom as she gets older. Period.

I know there are probably other factors that lead me to this decision, but I took some Tylenol PM a couple of hours ago and I'm really getting loopy, so I can't think of any more. Regardless, I think you get the picture--I resigned because there were lots and lots of straws on the camel!

Nervous Excitement

2010-10-23T10:32:00.000-05:00

I slept terribly last night, waking up ever hour or so and having a hard time going back to sleep. I woke up at 6:30 and laid in bed wide awake--my mind was racing in so many directions I finally just got up. I guess it's not that strange under the circumstances, because a lot has happened in the last 48 hours and I'm getting ready to experience some major life changes. For the few people out there who don't know yet, I officially quit my job yesterday and I'm so very excited about it!

While a few of my friends were a little surprised, most people close to me knew I had been contemplating this change for a really long time. Honestly, the decision has been years in the making. I first started thinking about quitting or going part time several years ago when my back problems started. Sitting is just so painful for me, and since I sit at a computer programming reports all day long, that means I'm in pain every single day at work. This pain has controlled my life for so long, and I am so thankful that I won't have to sit all day long every day anymore.

Really though, the back pain was just the tip of the iceberg. For months we'd been praying that God would give us guidance and wisdom in relation to my job, because there were just so many issues making me want to quit--issues at work and in our personal lives. I'd been fighting my desire to leave mostly because of financial worries, since without two incomes we certainly won't be able to support as many ministries and causes that are important to us. It felt selfish to stay home when I'm capable of working since there are missionaries relying on our support to feed their families. It felt selfish to leave a good job when so many people were completely out of work. Finally though, so many things had piled up on the list of things making me want to quit, I felt like this must be God's direction--I was so burdened it felt nearly impossible to stay!

Although I don't necessarily want to go into huge amounts of detail about all the reasons I'm leaving, I do want to make a brief list, mostly so that 10 years from now I'll remember why I made this decision!

Work Related

1. I just had my 12th anniversary at work, and have been in my current position for 9 years. For about the last 2 years, I feel like I haven't learned anything new, so the work I'm doing is generally not that challenging, which means I'm not enjoying it nearly as much as I used to.

2. While the work I'm doing (creating database reports using SQL and PL/SQL, in case you're curious) isn't necessarily challenging, my workload certainly is. On average, I get 20-30 requests for reports or data each week, and it can be pretty stressful, especially because many people don't plan ahead and think their request is an emergency.

3. One of my responsibilities was training new employees on how to run reports, and only about 10% of the people I've trained over the years actually a) understand how the database works and b) remember the reports they were trained on and c) still actually work at the EA and d) actually care. It was such an exercise in futility and I was really tired of it.

4. As my organization geared up for another campaign, there was some reorganization taking place elsewhere in the building that affected my job and made the reporting process less efficient. Inefficiency is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me--I just can't take it.

5. There's another department in the building that has an incredible amount of turnover--there have been 16 people in 2 positions in 12 years. Since I happen to have worked in that department previously and also happen to have helped create their reporting application, the training of those new people and the cleaning up of their data-related messes always falls on my shoulders. They just had another person leave, and I just don't want to deal with them anymore. I find it super frustrating that the administration doesn't just fix the problem in the department that's causing all the turnover!

6. While my responsibilities at work seemed to increase each year, my position/title did not, so I felt as though my career wasn't advancing at all and there was no potential that it ever would.

I could probably think of lots of other things if I tried, but these were definitely the most significant work issues. The issues in my personal life are so numerous that I'll just have to put them into their own post tomorrow!

Beginner Graphics

2010-10-18T22:07:00.000-05:00

Since I get bored pretty easily, I've been trying to update the colors and header of my blog about every season. On Saturday, I was feeling kind of crummy (still fighting the cold I was complaining about before I left for DC), and since I didn't feel like doing anything except laying in bed anyway, I decided to use the time to redo my header for fall. Although my graphic design skills still leave a lot to be desired, I think I'm getting a little better, although I changed it so many times the new header took me like 3 hours to finish. I'm pretty sure a real designer could have done it in 1/3 of the time, but oh well. I like projects that help exercise my creativity!

In case you're subscribed through a blog reader and didn't see the new header, come visit the blog and let me know what you think!

DC 3-Day Pictures

2010-10-16T21:01:00.001-05:00

I've obviously been home for several days, but I haven't had the chance to blog until now because every free evening I've been trying to get the pictures from the 3-Day ready! Initially I didn't think I would spend much time editing them, but since most of the shots were taken while I was walking, there were plenty of crooked and blurry pics that needed a little attention. Plus, since I got the new Photoshop over the summer, I just can't help tweaking pictures a tiny bit even when they probably don't really need it!

Anyway, I added captions to some of the pictures, but many of the shots are just buildings that I thought were really cool even though I had no idea what they were! Maybe my DC knowledgeable friends Jake and Amber will help me identify some of them. There were so many awesome things to see on days 1 and 3 when we were in the city. I can't wait to get back there for a vacation to get a better look at the sites and learn more of their history!

I'm really going to try to write more about the 3-Day on my other blog, but in a nutshell, it was a great location for the event, the weather was darn near perfect, and my dad finished strong without any problems at all. Not that I had any doubts that he would!

Stress and Birthdays

2010-10-05T22:07:00.002-05:00

The last week has been quite stressful, and my body let me know that it wasn't appreciating the extra stress when I woke up Saturday morning with a sore throat and a fever. I wasn't really surprised under the circumstances. After receiving the terrible news on Thursday and subsequently worrying about my grieving friend nonstop, I could feel the illness coming on by Friday afternoon. Then after a super busy day at work I ended up staying at the office until after 7 trying to finish up a big project, which certainly didn't help things. Even downing a bunch of vitamin C Friday night and going to bed early didn't keep me from having to cancel my training walks with friends on Saturday morning. After sleeping most of Saturday away I managed to make it to our friend Mike's 40th birthday party for a couple of hours that evening. On Sunday I tried to rest as much as possible too, but that day we actually had another birthday party to go to--this one for our 1-year-old friend Violet!

Tonight the birthday theme continued when I went over to my friend Melissa's with a few other friends from work to bring her dinner and wine for her birthday. It was hard to call this one a birthday celebration though, since obviously Mel just lost her husband 7 days ago. There were a lot more tears and hugs at this party than candles and presents, unfortunately. The sadness and grief have been so emotionally draining, I can't even begin to imagine how Melissa and her family feel.

Although I've felt a little better every day since Saturday (is this only Tuesday??), I would like to have spent more of Sunday and yesterday evening lounging around and trying to heal. Unfortunately that wasn't possible since I had lots of packing and preparing to do, given that I'm flying out tomorrow evening to Columbus, Ohio, where my dad will pick me up. As most of my friends and family know, the following day we'll drive together to Washington, DC, where we'll be participating together in the newly titled Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure! I'm super excited!

Now if I can just make it through one more day of stress at work, I'll be free to enjoy a relaxing vacation with my Pop--that is if you consider walking 60 miles in a weekend relaxing!

Sadness Beyond Words

2010-09-30T23:13:00.000-05:00

This morning I received such horrific and unfathomable news it still seems absolutely surreal. I'm completely overwhelmed with sadness and yet part of me can't even wrap my brain around what's happened. Yesterday afternoon my good friend Melissa learned that her husband Gavin died while hiking in the Grand Canyon with some friends. I can't even express my sorrow for my friend and their two-year-old son Liam.

Although the final cause of death has not yet been published, initial indications are that Gavin died from heat-related illness. His death seems even more unreal since less than three weeks ago we were celebrating his 30th birthday with a bunch of friends at the bar he owned here in Lawrence. Although I'd known Gavin casually through Melissa for a couple of years, his birthday was really one of the first times I'd had an extended conversation with him. He was intelligent, funny, kind and down to earth, and he was loved by many, many people here in Lawrence. Gavin was involved in many community groups for which he volunteered his time and was a wonderful husband and father. He will be greatly missed.

Please say a prayer for my friend Melissa and their precious little guy Liam, and remember to hug your loved ones every chance you get. Life is just too short, and you never know what might happen tomorrow.

Margie's Family

2010-09-27T23:12:00.003-05:00

Although last week was a sad time for Chad's family with the loss of Grandma, the celebration of her life at her funeral was really very nice. We had a great time sharing stories about Grandma with her pastor the previous day, which he then retold at the service so that even those who didn't know her well learned what a strong, hard-working, giving, generous person she was. While we were talking with her pastor I realized I had a ton of first hand stories and memories of Grandma, considering she wasn't my actual grandmother at all. Then it dawned on me that she had been my Grandma for 17 years now--no wonder I felt like we were actually related! I think she was even more special to me since I lost my last grandparent, my beloved Grandma Seaman, over 11 years ago. Grandma Decker and our dear Grandma Luce are all I have!

Anyway, as it happens with many funerals, it was nice time to spend with family members that we don't get to see very often. After the burial on Thursday we went out to Chad's parents house and ate and chatted and relaxed with family, and it was really nice. Of course I took lots of pictures, and as I often do, I took lots of candid shots, which I think best capture real moments and real personalities. In fact, one of the few posed pictures of the entire day is one of the few I totally messed up! Candid shots are definitely more my strength!

Best.Video.Ever

2010-09-21T22:54:00.001-05:00

Back in 2006 when OK Go released their treadmill video to the world via Youtube, I became an instant fan. Their music is catchy and slightly unique, and their videos are SO amazingly creative and downright goofy. I'm a huge sucker for goofy.

Earlier this year I was amazed and mesmerized by another of their videos when they released the Rube Goldberg machine version of "This Too Shall Pass." If you haven't watched it you absolutely have to. Right now. It's just flipping phenomenal. Every time I watch it I see something totally new and amazing. I'm such a huge fan I can't believe I haven't actually talked about this before on my blog--maybe I have and just can't seem to find the post, since searching for "ok go" brings up hundreds of posts.

Anyway, today at lunch I was checking a dog photographer blog that I subscribe to and she had posted a new OK Go video that might just be my absolute favorite ever. While it's not quite as amazing as the Rube Goldberg machine, it's definitely near and dear to my heart. I was already a big fan--then they had to go and do this!!

Did you catch at the end that they have a place on their website where you can donate to the ASPCA? Can you see why I love it so much?